Conceptualizing and experiencing compassion.

Abstract

Does compassion feel pleasant or unpleasant? People tend to categorize compassion as a pleasant or positive emotion, but laboratory compassion inductions, which present another’s suffering, may elicit unpleasant feelings. Across two studies, we examined whether prototypical conceptualizations of compassion (as pleasant) differ from experiences of compassion (as unpleasant). Following laboratory-based neutral or compassion inductions, participants made abstract judgments about compassion relative to various emotion-related adjectives, thereby providing a prototypical conceptualization of compassion. Participants also rated their own affective states, thereby indicating experiences of compassion. Conceptualizations of compassion were pleasant across neutral and compassion inductions. Following exposure to others’ suffering, however, participants felt increased levels of compassion and unpleasant affect, but not pleasant affect. Following neutral inductions, participants reported more pleasant than unpleasant affect, with moderate levels of compassion. Thus, prototypical conceptualizations of compassion are pleasant, but experiences of compassion can feel pleasant or unpleasant. The implications for emotion theory in general are discussed.

Empathic Care and Distress: Predictive Brain Markers and Dissociable Brain Systems

“…During presentation of the biographies, empathic care tended to steadily increase, negative emotions tended to rise and fall, and positive emotions tended to rise towards the end of biographies (Figure 5a and Figure S3). Overall, our findings agrees with previous work showing that compassion and affiliative emotion do not have a clear, consistent valence (Condon & Barrett, 2013; Moll et al, 2012, 2014). …”

“…To better understand how empathic care and distress are related to a range of other emotions (Condon & Barrett, 2013; Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, & O’Connor, 1987), we collected an independent behavioral dataset ( N = 200) for testing marker specificity relative to sadness, fear, disgust, anger, happiness, surprise, positive valence, and negative valence. An advantage of our analytic approach, which used normative (group-average) time courses to develop the care and distress brain markers, is that it allowed us to map normative time courses for the eight other feelings collected in the behavioral sample on to the neuroimaging data.…”

Motives and comprehension in a public goods game with induced emotions

“…The motive we refer to here as care has been referred to by H. Heckhausen as "help" (1989) and J. Heckhausen as "prosocial altruism" (2000) and finally as "compassion" (Goetz et al 2010;Condon and Feldman Barrett 2013;Crocker and Canevello 2012). This motive has recently been investigated by experimental economists (Bault et al 2017;Chierchia et al 2017;Ring et al 2018).…”

Toward a Neuroscience of Compassion

“…For example, tenderness, sadness, and concern have been linked with prosocial motivation and behavior (Batson, Fultz, & Schoenrade, 1987;Eisenberg, Fabes, & Miller, 1989) as well as personal distress (unpublished data, described below), suggesting that valence and arousal alone are not linearly related to helping. Relatedly and somewhat paradoxically, Condon and Barrett found that compassion is conceptualized as a positively valenced emotion, but the experience of compassion leads to heightened negative affect (Condon & Barrett, 2013). Further research is needed to unpack the motivational consequences of various affective responses, focusing especially on the interpersonal consequences of emotions.…”