Conceptualizing and experiencing compassion.

Does compassion feel pleasant or unpleasant? Westerners 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). After 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. After exposure to others' suffering, however, participants felt increased levels of compassion and unpleasant affect, but not pleasant affect. After 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.

[1]  Olga Antonenko,et al.  An fMRI study of caring vs self-focus during induced compassion and pride. , 2012, Social cognitive and affective neuroscience.

[2]  B. Fredrickson,et al.  Handbook of positive emotions , 2014 .

[3]  G. A. Mendelsohn,et al.  Affect grid : A single-item scale of pleasure and arousal , 1989 .

[4]  P. Shaver,et al.  Emotion knowledge: further exploration of a prototype approach. , 1987 .

[5]  L. Barsalou.  Ideals, central tendency, and frequency of instantiation as determinants of graded structure in categories. , 1985, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[6]  L. F. Barrett.  Solving the Emotion Paradox: Categorization and the Experience of Emotion , 2006, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[7]  R. Davidson,et al.  Is compassion an emotion? A cross-cultural exploration of mental typologies , 2002 .

[8]  S. Fiske,et al.  The Handbook of Social Psychology , 1935 .

[9]  G. Edelman,et al.  A Universe Of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination , 2000 .

[10]  Tania Singer,et al.  Empathic distress fatigue rather than compassion fatigue? Integrating findings from empathy research in psychology and social neuroscience , 2012 .

[11]  P. Shaver,et al.  Emotion knowledge: further exploration of a prototype approach. , 1987, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[12]  Lisa Feldman Barrett,et al.  Neural Evidence That Human Emotions Share Core Affective Properties , 2013, Psychological science.

[13]  Robert Biswas-Diener,et al.  An experience sampling and cross-cultural investigation of the relation between pleasant and unpleasant affect , 2005 .

[14]  L. Barsalou.  Situated simulation in the human conceptual system , 2003 .

[15]  D. Cicchetti.  Emotion and Adaptation , 1993 .

[16]  B. Mesquita,et al.  The experience of emotion. , 2007, Annual review of psychology.

[17]  Michael C. Hout,et al.  Multidimensional Scaling , 2003, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Archaeology.

[18]  T. Singer,et al.  Functional neural plasticity and associated changes in positive affect after compassion training. , 2013, Cerebral cortex.

[19]  Lisa Feldman Barrett,et al.  Grounding emotion in situated conceptualization , 2011, Neuropsychologia.

[20]  R. Newcombe.  Consciousness , 1996, Journal of Clinical Neuroscience.

[21]  J. Russell,et al.  Core affect, prototypical emotional episodes, and other things called emotion: dissecting the elephant. , 1999, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[22]  Lisa Feldman Barrett,et al.  Feelings or words? Understanding the content in self-report ratings of experienced emotion. , 2004, Journal of personality and social psychology.