Seeing a child steal a toy from a fellow playmate. Watching a stranger cut in line at the grocery store. When we witness something unjust, our emotions often shape our behavior both toward the person wronged and the wrongdoer.
But why we help the victim in some cases or punish the transgressor in others isn’t that simple, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Published in the journal PLoS ONE, a new set of studies suggests that compassion — and intentionally cultivating it through training — may lead us to do more to help the wronged than to punish the wrongdoer. Researchers found compassion may also impact the extent to which people punish the transgressor.
Understanding what motivates people to be altruistic can not only inform our own behaviors, it may also play a role in creating more just societal institutions, including the legal and penal systems. It can also help researchers develop better interventions to cultivate compassion.
“Any action — helping or punishing — can arise from compassion, which involves at least two components: a ‘feeling’ component of empathic concern and caring for the suffering of another; and a cognitive, motivational component of wanting to alleviate that suffering,” says lead researcher Helen Weng, a former graduate student at the UW–Madison Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center, and current postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, San Francisco. “It may seem counterintuitive that punishment behavior can arise from compassion, but if the goal is to alleviate suffering of others, this may include providing negative feedback to the wrongdoer so that they change their behavior in the future.”
These findings build upon previous work by Weng and others, which demonstrates that as little as two weeks of compassion training can result in measurable changes in the brain. These previous studies gathered fMRI imaging and measured altruistic behavior in research subjects to reach these conclusions, but did not fully separate helping and punishing behavior to learn which is most related to compassion.
To answer this question, the investigators tested whether compassion was related to helping or punishment in two studies where participants played the “Helping Game” or “Punishment Game,” using real money they could keep at the end of the game.
In both games, participants watched through online interactions as one player with more funds chose to split an unfair amount of money with another player with no funds. In the Helping Game, the third-party observers could choose to do nothing or give some of their own funds to “help” the victim. In the Punishment Game, the third-party observers could choose to do nothing or “punish” the transgressor by spending their own funds to take money away from the wrongdoer.
Understanding what motivates people to be altruistic can not only inform our own behaviors, it may also play a role in creating more just societal institutions, including the legal and penal systems.
In one study examining 260 people who had no training in compassion, the team explored whether high self-reported empathic concern — the feeling component of compassion where one reports caring for those who are suffering — was associated with helping victims, punishing transgressors, or both.
“People with higher empathic concern were more likely to help the victim than punish the transgressor,” Weng says. “But, interestingly, within the group of people who decided to punish the transgressor, those with more empathic concern decided to punish less.”
Read more: A compassionate approach leads to more help and less punishment
The Latest on: Compassionate approach
via Google News
The Latest on: Compassionate approach
- NYC’s lawless policies are not ‘compassionate’ to those hurting the moston June 22, 2022 at 5:06 pm
Don’t let the rhetoric of “compassion” around permissive drug and crime policies fool you. They hurt addicts and thieves as much as anyone else.
- First American Patient Treated with VenusP-Valve™ Under Compassionate Useon June 22, 2022 at 2:38 am
(2500.HK, hereinafter referred to as "Venus Medtech"), recently completed its first compassionate use at University of Virginia Advanced Cardiac Valve Center in the U.S. The procedure was performed at ...
- Storyboard18 | Nobody wants to see a CEO’s cranial capabilities, they want to see compassion: Suresh Narayanan, Nestle MDon June 21, 2022 at 10:18 pm
Nestle India’s chairman and managing director, Suresh Narayanan, talks about Maggi, managing crises, leadership and LinkedIn in an exclusive interview with Storyboard18.
- Fathers Day: Setting an example in being kind, compassionate and respectfulon June 18, 2022 at 1:19 am
Father-of-three says that it's important for fathers to set a good example and teach their sons to respect women.
- Advocates call for more compassion, understanding when dealing with county's homeless populationon June 16, 2022 at 2:43 pm
Advocates called for city and county leaders, and the community to be more compassionate when it comes to the homelessness crisis San Diego continues to face.
- Can The Next School Shooting Be Prevented With Compassion?on June 15, 2022 at 9:10 pm
The Uvalde school shooting has renewed questions of how to prevent the next shooting. For many who've opened fire in schools, the path to violence has common traits. A growing number of schools are ...
- Giving Leaders The Superpower Of Compassionon June 15, 2022 at 5:21 am
This approach resonates well with Adam Grant’s concepts from ... and that is great because being empathetic is a precursor to being compassionate. What Hougaard, Carter and Afton recently highlighted ...
- How Trumpian Populists Can Learn from ‘Compassionate Conservatism’on June 14, 2022 at 1:30 am
Republicans looking to shift the party toward the working class should study the failure of the Bush-era mantra.
- The Failure of ‘Compassionate Conservatism’ Offers Lessons for the Trumpian Righton June 14, 2022 at 1:30 am
Republicans looking to shift the party toward the working class should study how the Bush-era mantra fell short.
- How to Lead With Curiosity, Courage, and Compassionon June 13, 2022 at 12:40 pm
How we act along our daily journey ultimately impacts society in much deeper ways than any of us ever acknowledge. So as our youngest leaders embark upon your entrepreneurial journeys, here is my core ...
via Bing News