Neuroscience
In parallel with the difficulties caused by trauma, such as depression and ill health, some people experience positive psychological changes, such as a renewed appreciation for life and increased resilience – a phenomenon psychologists term "post traumatic growth". According to a new study in the journal Emotion, we can add another positive outcome related to adversity – compassion. The more adversity in life a person has experienced, the more compassion they tend to feel and show toward others.
Daniel Lim and David DeSteno at Northeastern University first surveyed 224 people via Amazon's Mechanical Turk website: just over 60 per cent were female, and their ages ranged from 22 to 74. The participants answered questions about the adversity they'd experienced in life, including injuries, bereavements, disasters, and relationship breakdowns. They also completed measures of their empathy and compassion, and the survey ended with a chance to donate some of their participation fee to charity. The more adversity participants had experienced (the nature of the adversity didn't matter), the more empathy they said they had, and in turn, this greater empathy was associated with more self-reported compassion, and more actual generosity, as revealed by the amounts the participants chose to donate to charity.
To test this adversity-compassion link further, the researchers conducted an experiment: they first tricked 51 students into thinking they were taking part in an emotion recognition study. While in the lab, they saw another student participant – actually an actor – taking part in a really boring task, even though he'd told the researcher he was feeling ill and had a doctor's appointment to get to. The participants had the chance to help complete the boring task the ill student was working on – whether they chose to help, and how much they helped, was used as a measure of their compassion. The next day, the participants answered questions about the adversity they'd experienced in life, as well as their empathy and compassion. Again, students who'd lived through more adversity reported having greater empathy, and in turn this was related to higher self-ratings of compassion, and crucially, it was also related to actually showing more compassionate behaviour towards the ill student.
The researchers caution that they've only shown that experiencing past adversity correlates with, rather than causes, greater compassion. And they acknowledge that of course everyone responds differently to adversity, and that people's psychological responses evolve over different time frames. However, they say their results do support the notion that "adversity, on average, likely fosters compassion and subsequent prosociality." They also see sound theoretical reasons why this might be the case – compassion can be seen as a "forward-looking coping response" that helps to strengthen social ties, to the benefit of the compassionate person and those whom they help. The new findings also chime with other related research: for example, a 2011 study found that people who have suffered more themselves show greater altruism and sympathy for disaster victims.
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Lim, D., & DeSteno, D. (2016). Suffering and Compassion: The Links Among Adverse Life Experiences, Empathy, Compassion, and Prosocial Behavior. Emotion DOI: 10.1037/emo0000144
--further reading--
The adaptive mind: Children raised in difficult circumstances show enhanced mental flexibility in adulthood
Why is poverty associated with mental health problems for some people, but not others?
Poverty shapes how children think about themselves
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
Our free fortnightly email will keep you up-to-date with all the psychology research we digest: Sign up!
- The Lingering Burden Of Seeing A Past Trauma As Central To Your Identity
Horrific experiences often cast a pall upon our lives, but for some people it’s worse than others. A new study in Applied Cognitive Psychology explores a key reason for this difference known as “event centrality” – when we consider an experience...
- Intensive Meditation Training Seems To Enhance People's Compassion
Researchers have looked beyond the idea of meditation as a no-frills form of brain trainingPsychological research into meditation has overwhelmingly focused on its cognitive consequences, considering the practice as a kind of training for attention and...
- Writing About Your Emotional Pain Could Make You Feel Worse, Unless You Do It With “self-compassion”
By guest blogger Temma Ehrenfeld Some of us tend to brood over painful experiences. Others distract themselves, taking on more work, for example, or watching videos. In my experience, brooders think distractors are uninsightful people avoiding their problems...
- When Depressed Mothers Give Birth To Thriving Babies
Shelves of evidence show the long-term, adverse consequences for an embryo of having a mother who is stressed or malnourished during pregnancy. For instance, there's medical data showing that underweight newborn babies are more at risk of heart diseases...
- Spend Your Summer As A Research Intern In The Grand Canyon State!
...
Neuroscience
People who have experienced more adversity show more compassion
Daniel Lim and David DeSteno at Northeastern University first surveyed 224 people via Amazon's Mechanical Turk website: just over 60 per cent were female, and their ages ranged from 22 to 74. The participants answered questions about the adversity they'd experienced in life, including injuries, bereavements, disasters, and relationship breakdowns. They also completed measures of their empathy and compassion, and the survey ended with a chance to donate some of their participation fee to charity. The more adversity participants had experienced (the nature of the adversity didn't matter), the more empathy they said they had, and in turn, this greater empathy was associated with more self-reported compassion, and more actual generosity, as revealed by the amounts the participants chose to donate to charity.
To test this adversity-compassion link further, the researchers conducted an experiment: they first tricked 51 students into thinking they were taking part in an emotion recognition study. While in the lab, they saw another student participant – actually an actor – taking part in a really boring task, even though he'd told the researcher he was feeling ill and had a doctor's appointment to get to. The participants had the chance to help complete the boring task the ill student was working on – whether they chose to help, and how much they helped, was used as a measure of their compassion. The next day, the participants answered questions about the adversity they'd experienced in life, as well as their empathy and compassion. Again, students who'd lived through more adversity reported having greater empathy, and in turn this was related to higher self-ratings of compassion, and crucially, it was also related to actually showing more compassionate behaviour towards the ill student.
The researchers caution that they've only shown that experiencing past adversity correlates with, rather than causes, greater compassion. And they acknowledge that of course everyone responds differently to adversity, and that people's psychological responses evolve over different time frames. However, they say their results do support the notion that "adversity, on average, likely fosters compassion and subsequent prosociality." They also see sound theoretical reasons why this might be the case – compassion can be seen as a "forward-looking coping response" that helps to strengthen social ties, to the benefit of the compassionate person and those whom they help. The new findings also chime with other related research: for example, a 2011 study found that people who have suffered more themselves show greater altruism and sympathy for disaster victims.
_________________________________
Lim, D., & DeSteno, D. (2016). Suffering and Compassion: The Links Among Adverse Life Experiences, Empathy, Compassion, and Prosocial Behavior. Emotion DOI: 10.1037/emo0000144
--further reading--
The adaptive mind: Children raised in difficult circumstances show enhanced mental flexibility in adulthood
Why is poverty associated with mental health problems for some people, but not others?
Poverty shapes how children think about themselves
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
Our free fortnightly email will keep you up-to-date with all the psychology research we digest: Sign up!
- The Lingering Burden Of Seeing A Past Trauma As Central To Your Identity
Horrific experiences often cast a pall upon our lives, but for some people it’s worse than others. A new study in Applied Cognitive Psychology explores a key reason for this difference known as “event centrality” – when we consider an experience...
- Intensive Meditation Training Seems To Enhance People's Compassion
Researchers have looked beyond the idea of meditation as a no-frills form of brain trainingPsychological research into meditation has overwhelmingly focused on its cognitive consequences, considering the practice as a kind of training for attention and...
- Writing About Your Emotional Pain Could Make You Feel Worse, Unless You Do It With “self-compassion”
By guest blogger Temma Ehrenfeld Some of us tend to brood over painful experiences. Others distract themselves, taking on more work, for example, or watching videos. In my experience, brooders think distractors are uninsightful people avoiding their problems...
- When Depressed Mothers Give Birth To Thriving Babies
Shelves of evidence show the long-term, adverse consequences for an embryo of having a mother who is stressed or malnourished during pregnancy. For instance, there's medical data showing that underweight newborn babies are more at risk of heart diseases...
- Spend Your Summer As A Research Intern In The Grand Canyon State!
...