Welcome to this week’s Compassionate Nature post which considers the role of compassion and group dynamics within prosocial behaviours.
No man is an island, entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
John Donne’s famous lines from his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions published in 1624 highlight a key aspect of human life. Connection.
Life is made up of connections and relationships, from the micro level between individuals to the macro level of society. A major tenet within moral philosophy and most world religions is to treat others in the way that you would like to be treated by them. Sometimes called the Golden Rule, a term that apparently first formally appeared in the Anglican church during early 17th Century, it is an underlying ethos that has existed for centuries across many different cultures and civilisations.
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There are different terms that can be used, sometimes interchangeably, for the positive actions that we can take towards others. You can probably think of several words that might be used, such as kindness, empathy, or compassion. While academics can (and do!) debate varying definitions and relationships between these words, there are some differences if you stop to think about them. I can be kind to be helpful and I can also be kind while being cruel. I can be empathic for both positive reasons, to understand your situation, or for negative reasons, to exploit you. This is why for me compassion, an intentional act informed by distress with the motivation to address that distress, resonates more. Within his work on compassion Paul Gilbert uses the phrase “ be helpful rather than harmful” which I think chimes with the Golden Rule. However it is worth noting that a compassionate act is towards addressing distress - or put another way, without distress there is no compassion.
Being social.
In Living Like Crazy Paul noted that “compassion is regarded as one of the most central components of prosocial behaviour”. Prosocial behaviour can also have multiple definitions, perhaps it is a phrase that is less widely used than its opposite, antisocial behaviour. The definition of prosocial behaviours usually includes viewing it as a voluntary and intentional act that benefits the wellbeing of another or a collective group, which is seen as a positive contribution to society. It may incur a cost, with altruistic acts as an example. In his book Choose Compassion, James Kirby highlights that while the ethos behind the Golden Rule and prosocial behaviours appears to be one that has been present throughout human history, how that manifests and what is seen as beneficial is set by the prevailing social norms. This has been demonstrated within cross-cultural research, with James noting that“ for the most part that compassionate and prosocial motivations are universal….how that manifests into behaviour depends on culture”.
Research has suggested that fostering individual compassionate motivation and intention could be helpful to support greater prosocial behaviours and benefit wider society. What do some recent studies tell us about that and the role of social or group norms?
Self-compassion and helping others.
While self-compassion has good levels of evidence for supporting personal wellbeing, there appears to be rather more mixed evidence of its influence upon prosocial behaviours. Xinyi Liu and colleagues (2023) explored this through latent profile analysis of a group of adolescents at a high school in north west China.
Research geek aside - latent profile analysis is a statistical method of identifying clusters or sub-populations based on continuous variables within a population. A continuous variable is one that can take any value and can be measured, for example height. Individuals within the population can be assigned by probability into the subpopulations. This can help identify patterns within the data that allow individuals to be matched and compared using those patterns.
A sample of 533 students, almost evenly split between male and female with a mean age of 17, was assessed using established measures of self-compassion and prosocial behaviour. The profile analysis focussed in on their levels of self-warmth and self-coldness, leading to 4 profiles being defined. The Indifference profile identified those who had low scores on the self-compassion measure, while the High Responding profile had high scores. The Uncompassionate profile had low self-warmth and high self-coldness scores, while the Compassionate profile had high self-warmth and low self-coldness. The research team found that the greatest level of prosocial behaviour was in the Compassionate profile, followed by High Responding, Uncompassionate and lastly Indifferent profiles. The role of self-warmth as measured by the self-compassion measure appeared influential upon prosocial motivation. There are limitations to the study, from the sample demographics and no causal link can be interpreted between self-compassion and prosocial behaviours. The study does support other research to indicate a likelihood that how we treat and care for ourselves manifests in how we treat and care for others. This doesn’t mean you have to be self-compassionate to care for others though. There is plenty of research which shows that we can be very hard on ourselves while helping and caring deeply for others.
Perception of status.
While that study suggests an individuals level of self-compassion may have a bearing on their prosocial behaviours, those behaviours are likely to be influenced by the social group or community they are part of. It is easier to be compassionate or help others we identify as being like us or within our group, as opposed to those we perceive as outside of that group.
Bennett Callaghan and colleagues (2023) carried out a field study within two large US cities to consider whether the apparent social status of an individual makes them more or less likely to receive help. A member of the team stood on the street holding a hand-written sign asking for donations to support the homeless, which did not indicate whether they were homeless themselves. To signify their social status they were either dressed causally, more scruffily or they were in a suit and well groomed. Across the study over 4500 people passed by the team member, with around 2000 during the well presented condition and just over 2500 during the less well presented condition. When dressed smarter the team member received more than 2 times the amount of donations than when dressed more causally. The results also hint that people were more likely to donate and when doing so offer larger amounts when perceiving the individual to be of higher status through their smarter attire. It is worth highlighting that only 2% of those passing by in each condition actually made a donation.
The team followed this up with a separate online study of 504 participants who viewed images of the team member in the two conditions from the field study. The results suggest that they felt greater similarity and a sense of shared humanity with the perceived higher status individual than they did with the lower status individual, who was also perceived as being less competent and trustworthy. Interestingly the results also showed that both were seen as being low in overall social status. The online study also addressed the potential confounding variable of whether a well dressed person asking for money on the street was more noticeable, with the online study suggesting the opposite, with more attention appearing to be shown to the less well presented individual. The authors suggest this may be a result of an increased perception of threat from the causally dressed individual in comparison to the well dressed individual. A key limitation of these two studies is the lack of actual measurement of compassion, the prosocial behaviour is measured by the donation behaviour or indirectly through perceptions of the images. Additionally people making a donation were only aware if it was going to a charity and not the individual if they asked, which may have influenced levels of donation. The results suggest that in the case of the prosocial behaviour of making a donation, how we perceive the recipient in relation to ourselves influences that behaviour.
All things being equal.
Kelly Kirkland and colleagues (2023) at the University of Queensland explored what might motivate more prosocial behaviours between groups by considering the role of compassion, levels of inequality between the groups and the prosocial norms of the group. In a paper covering three related studies, the team used an experimental design of two groups who had unequal amounts of food resource, as denoted by a combination of Lego bricks. In a controlled setting, one group had high amounts of Lego while the other had less, with the two groups given no other direction than to meet a superordinate goal of ensuring that no-one starved. In psychology a superordinate goal is one which can only be achieved where two or more groups work together. The research team were interested in the prosocial behaviours to support that goal, which they assessed by measuring what sharing happened, if it was given or requested, the volume of resource made and how efficiently it was made.
The compassion study had 283 participants, who were mainly female with an average age of 21. Several sessions were held with each having a maximum of 12 participants, who were randomly allocated to a high resource or low resource group. At the start of a session the two groups listened to ether a compassion based meditation exercise or a focused imagery exercise. The participants were also measured for their fears of giving or receiving compassion and their awareness of inequality. The results found that participants reported an increased sense of compassion, irrespective of whether they were in a high or low resource group from the compassion based exercise. However this did not result in differences in the actual prosocial behaviours, with similar levels of activities to help ensure no-one starved within the compassion and the imagery conditions. This is not in line with other research which has found developing or supporting compassion through such exercises can result in greater prosocial behaviour, possibly due to the short duration of the recording used. The findings do indicate that while the participants reported feeling more compassionate individually this appears to have not influenced the groups prosocial actions.
The study team then examined if changing the level of inequality between the two groups was influential. In this case one condition was to have the level of inequality in the Lego resources the same as the compassion study and one with greater inequality, with more in the higher resource group and less in the lower resource group. The sample was similar to the compassion study, with 173 participants who were mainly female with an average age of 21. No difference was found in these conditions and participants did not appear to notice the greater level of inequality as a motivating factor. A third study was carried out, this time with a member of the research added into each group. The participants of the study, of which there were 160, again mainly female and with an average age of 20, were not aware of this. The team member was vocal during the experiment, in one condition promoting sharing while in the other condition just talking about how much they liked Lego. In this instance there were differences, with the groups where the team member was setting a prosocial norm sharing more, building faster and creating more resources.
The three studies in the paper are well designed, with pre-registered hypothesis and open data under the Open Science Framework. Some limitations reduce the generalisation of the results, including the sample demographics of young, mainly female participants drawn from an undergraduate population and it is unclear how experimental designs using props to mimic resources would translate into real world behaviours. Further studies could explore the motivations of the group behaviour further, especially with regard to the role of compassion, as the authors note that the prosocial behaviour of sharing could have resulted from other motivations such as pity. Collectively the results suggest that a short exposure to the promotion of compassion and awareness of inequality at an individual level may not sway the behaviour of a group, while a leader who promotes prosocial behaviour can set a norm which does foster more caring actions.
At our best, we nurture, comfort and soothe, and we possess an innate motivation to care for each other.
In The Gifts of Compassion Stan Steindl highlighted compassion as a motivation we have towards prosocial behaviours. The reviewed studies suggest that the more warmth we show ourselves, the more motivated we may be to help others. Self-compassion is not a pre-requisite for caring for others, however it does assist with managing and reacting to distress, which may help with tolerating and understanding the distress of others, thereby allowing us to help them more intentionally. Our prosocial behaviours may be influenced by the social norms of the groups we belong to, where our motivation can be limited by how we perceive the person in distress in relation to ourselves, while we may feel more motivated by words and actions that promote prosocial behaviour from key figures within the group.
Perhaps being aware of these influences can help us towards applying the Golden Rule more in daily life.
Next week’s post will follow on from this topic and consider the role of exposure to nature upon prosocial behaviours - the results may be surprising.
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References
Callaghan, B., Delgadillo, Q. M., & Kraus, M. W. (2022). The influence of signs of social class on compassionate responses to people in need. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 936170.https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.936170
Kirkland, K., Jetten, J., Wilks, M., & Kirby, J. (2023). Promoting prosocial behavior in an unequal world. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 1021093. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1021093
Liu, X., Shen, Y., Cui, L., Liu, B., & Yang, Y. (2023). From self to others: Examining the association between self-compassion and prosocial behavior in Chinese adolescents using Latent Profile Analysis. Mindfulness, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-023-02133-4