Summary of Part B studies

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[edit] Summary of Studies about the Positive Effects of Compassion & Empathy

Originally based on a 2007 article by Jennifer Goetz, UC Berkeley

From the outset, feelings of empathic concern have been positively related to helping and prosocial behavior (Batson et al, 1987). Feelings of personal distress, however, have only related to helping behavior when it was the easiest means of reducing distress. This has been shown even in such self-serving economic games such as the prisoner's dilemma (Batson & Moran, 1999). Additionally, personality differences in empathic concern and personal distress predict the types of prosocial behavior people choose to engage in (Davis et al, 1999). People who are more likely to feel empathic concern are also more likely to choose volunteer opportunities in which they expect to feel sympathy. Finally, although sympathy is generally considered to be an emotion that is directed towards individuals, research has shown that feeling and compassion for an individual from a stigmatized group can induce helping for the group as a whole (Batson et al, 2002).

In the domain of personal relationships, personality correlates of sympathy like empathic concern and perspective taking are positively related to long-term relationship satisfaction (Davis & Oathout, 1987). This is perhaps because of the close association between feeling compassion and forgiveness (McCullough et al, 1997) as well as those who are able to look at things from the other person's perspective (McCullough, 2001).

Forgiveness is not easy, however, and when we evaluate an individual to be responsible for negative outcomes, we tend to feel very little compassion and a lot of anger (Weiner, 1993). Research shows that this combination of emotions can be detrimental in negotiation situations because it reduces individuals desire to work together and their ability to identify win-win situations (Allred et al, 1994). In addition, feeling a lot of anger and little sympathy is related to choosing punitive, retaliatory outcomes in classroom settings (Reyna & Weiner, 2001) and public policy (Gault & Sabini, 2000).