Compassion
Compassion is a social emotion that motivates people to go out of their way to relieve the physical, mental, or emotional pains of others and themselves. Compassion is sensitivity to the emotional aspects of the suffering of others. When based on notions such as fairness, justice, and interdependence, it may be considered partially rational in nature.
Compassion involves "feeling for another" and is a precursor to empathy, the "feeling as another" capacity. In common parlance, active compassion is the desire to alleviate another's suffering.
Compassion involves allowing oneself to be moved by suffering to help alleviate and prevent it. An act of compassion is one that is intended to be helpful. Other virtues that harmonize with compassion include patience, wisdom, kindness, perseverance, warmth, and resolve. It is often, though not inevitably, the key component in altruism. The difference between sympathy and compassion is that the former responds to others' suffering with sorrow and concern whereas the latter responds with warmth and care. An article in Clinical Psychology Review suggests that "compassion consists of three facets: noticing, feeling, and responding".
is the heartfelt wish to relieve the suffering of all beings, paired with the courage to act. plant seeds of joy in others—and in ourselves—making them a true source of lasting
Etymology
The English noun compassion, meaning "to suffer together with", comes from Latin. Its prefix com- comes directly from com, an archaic version of the Latin preposition and affix wikt:cum ; the -passion segment is derived from passus, past participle of the deponent verb wikt:patior. Compassion is thus related in origin, form and meaning to the English noun patient, from patiens, present participle of the same wikt:patior, and is akin to the Greek verb πάσχειν and to its cognate noun wikt:πάθος. Ranked a great virtue in numerous philosophies, compassion is considered in almost all the major religious traditions as among the greatest of virtues.Theories on conceptualizing compassion
Theoretical perspectives show contrasts in their approaches to compassion.In addition, the more a person knows about the human condition and human experiences, the more vivid the route to identification with suffering becomes. Identifying with another person is an essential process for human beings, something that is even illustrated by infants who begin to mirror the facial expressions and body movements of their mother as early as the first days of their lives. Compassion is recognized through identifying with other people, the knowledge of human behavior, the perception of suffering, the transfer of feelings, and the knowledge of goal and purpose-changes in sufferers which leads to the decline of their suffering.
Personality psychology agrees that human suffering is always individual and unique. Suffering can result from psychological, social, and physical trauma which happens in acute and chronic forms. Suffering has been defined as the perception of a person's impending destruction or loss of integrity, which continues until the threat is vanquished or the person's integrity can be restored.
Compassion therefore has three major requirements: the compassionate person must feel that the troubles that evoke their feelings are serious; the belief that the sufferers' troubles are not self-inflicted; and the ability to picture oneself with the same problems in a non-blaming, non-shaming manner.
Because the compassion process is highly related to identifying with another person and is possible among people from other countries, cultures, locations, etc., compassion is characteristic of democratic societies.
The role of compassion as a factor contributing to individual or societal behavior has been the topic of continuous debate. In contrast to the process of identifying with other people, a complete absence of compassion may require ignoring or disapproving identification with other people or groups. Earlier studies established the links between interpersonal violence and cruelty which leads to indifference. Compassion may induce feelings of kindness and forgiveness, which could give people the ability to stop situations that have the potential to be distressing and occasionally lead to violence. This concept has been illustrated throughout history: The Holocaust, genocide, European colonization of the Americas, etc. The seemingly essential step in these atrocities could be the definition of the victims as "not human" or "not us". The atrocities committed throughout human history are thus claimed to have only been relieved, minimized, or overcome in their damaging effects through the presence of compassion, although recently, drawing on empirical research in evolutionary theory, developmental psychology, social neuroscience, and psychopathy, it has been counterargued that compassion or empathy and morality are neither systematically opposed to one another, nor inevitably complementary, since over the course of history, mankind has created social structures for upholding universal moral principles, such as Human Rights and the International Criminal Court.
On one hand, Thomas Nagel, for instance, critiques Joshua Greene by suggesting that he is too quick to conclude utilitarianism specifically from the general goal of constructing an impartial morality; for example, he says, Immanuel Kant and John Rawls offer other impartial approaches to ethical questions.
In his defense against the possible destructive nature of passions, Plato compared the human soul to a chariot: the intellect is the driver and the emotions are the horses, and life is a continual struggle to keep the emotions under control. In his defense of a solid universal morality, Immanuel Kant saw compassion as a weak and misguided sentiment. "Such benevolence is called soft-heartedness and should not occur at all among human beings", he said of it.
Psychology
Compassion has become associated with and researched in the fields of positive psychology and social psychology. Compassion is a process of connecting by identifying with another person. This identification with others through compassion can lead to increased motivation to do something in an effort to relieve the suffering of others.Compassion is an evolved function from the harmony of a three grid internal system: contentment-and-peace system, goals-and-drives system, and threat-and-safety system. Paul Gilbert defines these collectively as necessary regulated systems for compassion.
Paul Ekman describes a "taxonomy of compassion" including: emotional recognition, emotional resonance, familial connection, global compassion, sentient compassion, and heroic compassion.
Ekman also distinguishes proximal from distal compassion : "...it has implications in terms of how we go about encouraging compassion. We are all familiar with proximal compassion: Someone falls down in the street, and we help him get up. That's proximal compassion: where we see someone in need, and we help them. But, when I used to tell my kids, 'Wear a helmet,' that's distal compassion: trying to prevent harm before it occurs. And that requires a different set of skills: It requires social forecasting, anticipating harm before it occurs, and trying to prevent it. Distal compassion is much more amenable to educational influences, I think, and it's our real hope." Distal compassion also requires perspective-taking.
Compassion is associated with psychological outcomes including increases in mindfulness and emotion regulation.
While empathy plays an important role in motivating caring for others and in guiding moral behavior, Jean Decety's research demonstrates that this is far from being systematic or irrespective to the social identity of the targets, interpersonal relationships, and social context. He proposes that empathic concern has evolved to favor kin and members of one own social group, can bias social decision-making by valuing one single individual over a group of others, and this can frontally conflict with principles of fairness and justice.
Compassion fatigue
People with a higher capacity or responsibility to empathize with others may be at risk for "compassion fatigue", also called "secondary traumatic stress". Examples of people at risk for compassion fatigue are those who spend significant time responding to information related to suffering. However, newer research by Singer and Ricard suggests that it is lack of suitable distress tolerance that gets people fatigued from compassion activities. Individuals at risk for compassion fatigue usually display these four key attributes: diminished endurance and/or energy, declined empathic ability, helplessness and/or hopelessness, and emotional exhaustion. Negative coping skills can also increase the risk of developing compassion fatigue.People can alleviate sorrow and distress by doing self-care activities on a regular basis. helps to guide people to recognize the impact and circumstances of past events. After people, they are able to find the causes of compassion fatigue in their daily life. Practice of nonjudgmental compassion can prevent fatigue and burnout. Some methods that can help people to heal compassion fatigue include physical activity, eating healthy food with every meal, good relations with others, enjoying interacting with others in the community, writing a journal frequently, and sleeping enough every day. The practice of mindfulness and self-awareness also helps with compassion fatigue.