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=== ''Part B: The Positive Effects of Compassion and Empathy on Social Life'' === Having identified the emotional, personality, and value constructs of compassion, it is helpful to examine the outcomes associated with them. Our definition includes not only feelings of sympathy and concern, but also the desire to alleviate suffering. The following articles cite the outcomes of feeling compassion in the domains of helping, stigma, relationships, forgiveness, negotiation, and justice. See below for summaries of individual studies or here for Goetz's [[summary of Part B studies]]. [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6WP2-45SJCM6-1-1&_cdi=6978&_user=4420&_orig=search&_coverDate=06%2F30%2F1997&_sk=999299996&view=c&wchp=dGLbVlb-zSkWA&md5=b5e7151b4705e851adf87e2ea72b043e&ie=/sdarticle.pdf '''''Allred, K. G., Mallozzi, J. S., Matsui, F., & Raia, C. P. (1997). The influence of anger and compassion on negotiation performance. Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, 70(3), 175-187.'''''] In a negotiation experiment, 66 same-sex dyads were led to believe that harmful behavior was either the responsibility of their partner or not. Belief that one's partner was responsible for harm reduced desire to work with each other in the future and reduced joint negotiation outcomes. This effect was mediated by the amount of emotional regard (anger minus compassion) the dyads indicated for their partner. The effect on joint outcomes was significant for the participants who played the employer role, but not the employee role, indicating that implicit power may have interacted with the influence of emotional regard. Although this study did not examine the effect of compassion by itself, it indicates that compassion may be important for successful negotiations. [http://www-mi4.csa.com/ids70/linking.php?linktype=FulltextPDF&record=ids%3Apsycinfo-set-c%2FPIMain2002_03.xml.20070607.wais.utf8fix+61284983+psycinfo-set-c&SID=3d90c8bde70463750223ad16e5c934b1 '''''Batson, C. D., Chang, J., Orr, R., & Rowland, J. (2002). Empathy, attitudes and action: Can feeling for a member of a stigmatized group motivate one to help the group. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(12), 1656-1666.'''''] Although empathy is an emotion that is felt directly for another individual, it may be possible that these feelings can have a more generalized effect. It is important to remember that Batson's definition of empathy is very similar to our definition of compassion: an other-oriented emotional response that includes sympathy, compassion, and tenderness. In this study, empathy was measured by ratings of adjectives: sympathetic, compassionate, soft-hearted, warm, tender, and moved. In the first study, female participants felt more empathy for a young woman with AIDS when they were asked to take her perspective rather than be objective. This effect was lessened, however, when they were led to believe the young woman was responsible for having contracted AIDS. In addition, feelings of empathy led to better attitudes towards people with AIDS, except when the target group was extremely similar to the participants (young women) and responsible for having AIDS. The second experiment looked at a more stigmatized group: the homeless. Feelings of empathy for a homeless man increased attitudes for the homeless in general. Again, responsibility of the homeless man for his condition lessened feelings of empathy. Finally, the third study used convicted murderers as the target group. Short-term laboratory results showed that empathic feelings were related to more favorable attitudes towards murderers. A week later, a telephone interviewer called participants and asked about their attitudes towards prison reform. The table below (from the article) shows that attitudes were higher when participants were induced to feel more empathy towards a killer. Attitude Toward Murderers in Experiment 3: At Laboratory Session and in Telephone Interview 1-2 Weeks Later Time of measurement of attitudes Empathy condition Laboratory session Telephone interview Low 4.20 4.68 High 4.48 5.42 [http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/66000302/PDFSTART '''''Batson, C. D., & Moran, T. (1999). Empathy-induced altruism in a prisoner's dilemma. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29(7), 909-924.'''''] Over 2000 prisoner's dilemma studies have shown that 30 to 50% of people cooperate with their partner without any coaching. This study sought to show that this proportion could be increased with empathy-induced altruism. Empathy was induced by giving participants a note from a "partner" that indicated that she had just broken up with her boyfriend. Additional instructions encouraged participants to read the note either objectively or with their partner's perspective in mind. People who both read the note and took their partner's perspective indicated more empathy. They also cooperated more than did those who received no note or who read the note objectively. There was also an additional manipulation that led participants to believe the experiment was a business experiment. This manipulation showed that when empathy was not induced, cooperation decreased. When empathy was induced, however, cooperation was almost as strong as the non-business condition. This supports the authors' argument that empathic altruism is separate and distinct from moral motivation. [http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1467-6494.00062 '''''Davis, M. H., Mitchell, K. V., Hall, J. A., Lothert, J., Snapp, T., & Meyer, M. (1999). Empathy, expectations, and situational preferences: Personality influences on the decision to participate in volunteer helping behaviors. Journal of Personality, 67(3), 469-503.'''''] This series of studies shows that personality differences in empathic concern and personal distress affect the choices people make about volunteer activities. In three separate studies, they show that people who are high on empathic concern tend to choose volunteer opportunities in which they expect to feel sympathy. Likewise, people who are high on personal distress are likely to avoid situations in which they expect to feel more personal distress. This was true in a study with hypothetical, volunteering in a lab situation, and real-life volunteering. [http://www-mi4.csa.com/ids70/linking.php?linktype=FulltextPDF&record=ids%3Apsycinfo-set-c%2FPIMain1985-90_09.xml.20070607.wais.utf8fix+8837889+psycinfo-set-c&SID=3d90c8bde70463750223ad16e5c934b1 '''''Davis, M. H., & Oathout, H. A. (1987). Maintenance of satisfaction in romantic relationships: Empathy and relational competence. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 53(2), 397-410.'''''] In a correlational study of 264 heterosexual couples, the authors measured dispositional empathy to predict romantic relationship satisfaction via positive and negative behaviors. They used the IRI (see Davis, 1983), which has separate facets of empathy: perspective taking, empathic concern, and personal distress. The first two components predicted positive behaviors such as good communication, warmth, even temperedness, and positive outlook. Personal distress was negatively related to these behaviors, but positively related to untrustworthiness, insensitivity, and possessiveness. Overall, personal dispositions towards perspective taking and empathic concern were predicted more relationship satisfaction in long term rather than short term relationships. [http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=1&hid=103&sid=4834c544-86e0-444c-8f85-747892e22936%40sessionmgr103 '''''Gault, B. A., & Sabini, J. (2000). The roles of empathy, anger, and gender in predicting attitudes toward punitive, reparative, and preventative public policies. Cognition & Emotion. Special Issue: Emotion, cognition, and decision making, 14(4), 495-520.'''''] This article investigated the possibility that gender differences in political attitudes and policy preferences may be the result of state and trait emotional differences. The first three studies provide evidence that women prefer victim-oriented solutions and men prefer perpetrator-punishment policies. The fourth study is most relevant to our interest in compassion. Although it failed to reproduce all of the gender differences found in the earlier studies, the fourth study showed that empathy and anger account for some of the gender differences that exist. Overall, women reported more trait empathy than men. Trait empathy was related positively to ratings of a victim-support organization. In women only, state empathy was also positively related to support for a victim-focused organization. In contrast, the amount of anger participants felt was related to their support of a perpetrator-punishing organization. The authors suggest that an empathic disposition may have more effect on political action or attitude than does immediate emotional feeling. [http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1467-8721.00147 '''''McCullough, M. E. (2001). Forgiveness: Who does it and how do they do it? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10(6), 194-197.'''''] This article is a quick and comprehensive summary of the forgiveness literature to date. It is written by the leading researcher in this field. People who are inclined to forgive their transgressors tend to be more agreeable, more emotionally stable, and perhaps more spiritually or religiously inclined. Perhaps most relevant to the study of compassion, feeling empathy for a transgressor is highly related to forgiveness, as are generous attributions and appraisals regarding the transgression. [http://www-mi4.csa.com/ids70/linking.php?linktype=FulltextPDF&record=ids%3Apsycinfo-set-c%2FPIMain1996-99_08.xml.20070607.wais.utf8fix+3310363+psycinfo-set-c&SID=3d90c8bde70463750223ad16e5c934b1 '''''McCullough, M. E., Worthington, E. L. J., & Rachal, K. C. (1997). Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 73(2), 321-336.'''''] In two studies of forgiving in close relationships, the McCullough and colleagues show that people who feel empathy for the person who hurt or offended them are more likely to forgive them. In the first study, the researchers used Batson's measure of empathic concern (which we liken to compassion) to show that apologies tended to be associated with more empathy and concern for the offending person. In turn, forgiveness was associated with increased conciliatory behavior and decreased avoidance behavior. In other words, apologies led people to see that the offender was feeling remorse and then to reach out to them. The second study tested interventions by comparing two seminars: one that promoted empathy as a precursor to forgiving (empathy seminar) and one that simply encouraged forgiving. Results showed that the empathy seminar encouraged more empathy and more forgiving. Indeed the individual reports of empathy mediated the effects of seminar on forgiving. [http://www-mi4.csa.com/ids70/linking.php?linktype=FulltextPDF&record=ids%3Apsycinfo-set-c%2FPIMain2001_02.xml.20070607.wais.utf8fix+116686663+psycinfo-set-c&SID=3d90c8bde70463750223ad16e5c934b1 '''''Reyna, C., & Weiner, B. (2001). Justice and utility in the classroom: An attributional analysis of the goals of teachers' punishment and intervention strategies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93(2), 309-319.'''''] In this recent study, Reyna and Weiner provide evidence showing that punitive actions of teachers are often closely linked to emotional reactions to students. When students are perceived as responsible for negative outcomes, teachers tend to feel anger and this leads to more punitive responses (the top process in figure 1, below). When students are perceived as not responsible for negative outcomes, however, teachers tend to show more sympathy and this leads to less punitive responses (the lower process in figure 1). The outcomes in these studies of teachers are simply an example of Weiner's work on generally punitive philosophies and behavior. [[Figure 1. Reyna & Weiner's model of the relationship between attributions, emotions, and punishment goals.]]

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