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Research //

CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF COMPASSION

 

The Dalai Lama once said that "compassion is a necessity, not a luxury, and that without it humanity cannot survive." Compassion is the emotion that we feel in response to the suffering of others that motivates a desire to help. Yet we often curb our compassion to avoid perceived threats to the self.



In one line of research, the lab examines the motivated regulation of compassion in the context of large-scale crises, such as natural disasters and genocides. Much research has established that people tend to feel more compassion for single identifiable victims than large masses of victims. Yet research has found that this collapse of compassion depends on having the motivation and ability to regulate emotions (Cameron & Payne, 2011, JPSP). People only show less compassion for many victims than for single victims of disasters when they are expect to incur a financial cost of helping, and only when they can skillfully regulate their emotions. In ongoing research, the lab is exploring how concerns about becoming emotionally exhausted may motivate people to curb their compassion for--and dehumanize--members of stigmatized social groups, such as homeless individuals and drug addicts (Cameron, Harris, & Payne, in prep).



Dr. Cameron's research suggests two general approaches to fostering compassion for others. First, we can frame the costs of compassion in ways that defuse fears of getting exhausted and exploited. Second, we can build psychological resources that allow people to open themselves to accepting their compassion experiences without turning away. One such resource is mindful attention and acceptance (Cameron & Fredrickson, under review).



Much as there are costs of compassion, there may also be a cost to callousness. For example, when people down-regulate their compassion toward suffering victims, they later are forced to sacrifice either their moral principles or their sense of moral self (Cameron & Payne, 2012, Psychological Science).

Prosocial behavior

Current Projects //

Under construction.

Empathy

AFFECTIVE DYNAMICS OF MORAL JUDGMENT

 

When we decide whether an action is morally right or wrong, or whether a person deserves punishment and blame, are we driven by the heart or the head? The answer to this question, which traces from Plato through Hume to the present day, turns out to be both. Emotions are multifaceted and complex phenomena, built from concepts, core affect, and the situations around us. Paying due attention to the dynamic construction of emotions can greatly advance our knowledge about how people manage their moral lives.

In one line of research, the lab has examined how emotional awareness can enable more contextually sensitive moral decisions. Many studies now reveal that changing people's emotions can change moral decisions, even when those emotions are incidental and logically irrelevant to those decisions. Dr. Cameron has found that people who exhibit emotional awareness have sharpened moral perception. Emotionally aware moral decision-makers are able to prevent irrelevant emotions from influencing their moral decisions (Cameron, Payne, & Doris, 2013, JESP). We are currently exploring whether they also pay more attention to relevant emotions felt in response to moral violations themselves. Emotional awareness affords a form of wisdom once espoused by Aristotle, of feeling the right emotions, in the right amount, and in the right context.



The lab also uses mathematical modeling to understand the relationship between automatic affect and deliberative control during moral decision-making. Using the process dissociation procedure (Jacoby 1991; Payne, 2008), studies have dissociated automatic and controlled moral evaluations and used them to predict moral personality and behaviors (Cameron, Payne, & Sinnott-Armstrong, in prep). For example, people who are higher in psychopathic tendencies showed reduced automatic moral intuitions to harmful actions.  And automatic moral wrongness intuitions about gay marriage predicted voting in favor of an anti-gay marriage amendment in North Carolina. Future projects will extend this approach to clinical populations. Process dissociation will allow for theoretical and methodological refinement in exploring the automatic affective intuitions that are at the heart of many moral psychology theories.

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