Past research reveals important connections between meditative practices and compassion. Most studies, however, focus on the effects of one type of meditation (vs. a no-intervention control) on a single expression of compassion (e.g. offering a seat) towards a relatable target (e.g. a person on crutches), without exploring possible mechanisms. Hence, few studies include different types of meditation, active controls, multiple ways to express compassion, unrelatable targets, and potential mediators. To this end, the present study compared the effects of mindfulness meditation with those of compassion meditation on different expressions of compassion towards a convicted murderer. Seventy-four participants were randomly assigned to a mindfulness meditation, compassion meditation, or active control class, or a no-class control. After an 8-week programme, we assessed compassion by giving participants the option of fulfilling a murderer’s request that they write him and then coding those letters for empathy, sympathy, forgiveness, and optimism. Participants in the compassion meditation class wrote more optimistic letters compared to participants in the other three conditions, in part because they valued positivity more. No statistically significant differences emerged for the other expressions of compassion. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of how meditation increases compassion towards unrelatable targets.

American compassionate responses (i.e., sending sympathy cards) focus more on the positive (e.g., comforting memories) and less on the negative (e.g., the pain of someone's death) than German compassionate responses, partly because of cultural differences in how much people want to avoid feeling negative (i.e., avoided negative affect [ANA]). However, are these culture-specific compassionate responses considered more comforting and compassionate within their respective cultural context? We predicted that Americans would find responses that focus on the negative less and those that focus on the positive more comforting and compassionate than Germans will and that ANA would mediate these differences. In Study 1, 152 Americans and 315 Germans reported their ANA and rated how comforting they considered receiving different sympathy cards. As predicted, Americans found sympathy cards that contained negative content less and cards that contained positive content more comforting than Germans did. In Studies 2a and 2b, to examine whether these culture-specific conceptualizations of a comforting response would generalize to how people conceptualize a compassionate face, 118 Americans and 80 Germans selected stimuli that most resembled a compassionate (or happy) face using a reverse correlation task. As predicted, people's mental representation of a compassionate face contained more happiness/less sadness in an American than German context. Across studies, ANA partially mediated the cultural differences. This research demonstrates that responses that are intended to be compassionate might not be considered equally compassionate and comforting across cultures, which has implications for relief efforts, which are often organized internationally. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Even people from frequently studied cultural contexts differ in how they conceptualize compassion, partly because of differences in how much they want to avoid feeling negative. To broaden this past work, we include participants from an understudied cultural context and start to examine the process through which culture shapes compassion. Based on ethnographic and empirical studies that include Ecuadorians, we predicted that Ecuadorians would want to avoid feeling negative less compared to U.S. Americans. Furthermore, we hypothesized that because of these differences in avoided negative affect, compared to U.S. Americans, for Ecuadorians, a compassionate response would contain more emotion sharing, which in turn would be associated with conceptualizing a compassionate face as one that mirrors sadness more and expresses happiness (e.g., a kind smile) less. Using a reverse correlation task, participants in the United States and Ecuador selected the stimuli that most resembled a compassionate face. They also reported how much they wanted to avoid feeling negative and described what a compassionate response would entail. As predicted, compared to U.S. Americans, Ecuadorians wanted to avoid feeling negative less, they conceptualized a compassionate response as one that focused more on emotion sharing, and visualized a compassionate face as one that contained more sadness and less happiness. Furthermore, exploratory analyses suggest that wanting to avoid feeling negative and conceptualizations of a compassionate response as emotion sharing partly sequentially explained the cultural differences in conceptualizations of a compassionate face. What people regard as compassionate differs across cultures, which has important implications for cross-cultural counseling.

Noticing someone’s pain is the first step to a compassionate response. While past research suggests that the degree to which people want to avoid feeling negative (“avoided negative affect”; ANA) shapes how people respond to someone’s suffering, the present research investigates whether ANA also predicts how people process others’ suffering. In two studies, using complex photographs containing negative aspects (i.e., suffering), we found that the higher people’s ANA, the fewer details of negative aspects they correctly recognized, and the fewer negative words they used in their image descriptions. However, when asked to process negative content, the higher people’s ANA, the more negatively they rated that content. In Study 3, we report cultural differences in people’s sensitivity to notice suffering in an ambiguous image. ANA mediated these cultural differences. Implications for research on compassion are discussed.

Why can some Americans acknowledge the deeply rooted racism in the United States while others cannot? Past research suggests that the more people want to avoid feeling negative ("avoided negative affect; ANA"), the less likely they focus on and even perceive someone's suffering. Because acknowledging racism is one specific instance of noticing and acknowledging that people are suffering, the present research investigates whether ANA might also affect the degree to which people acknowledge racism. We predicted that the more people want to avoid feeling negative, the less they will acknowledge systemic racism and the more they will deny negative aspects of their country's history and current policies, that is, the more blindly patriotic they will be. In Study 1, 104 undergraduates reported their ANA and patriotism and rated how much racism they perceived in certain situations. As predicted, the more participants wanted to avoid feeling negative, the less they acknowledged systemic racism. These findings held even after controlling for political ideology, ethnicity, moral foundations, and how people actually feel. However, ANA did not predict blind patriotism. In Study 2, we randomly assigned 116 participants to either an increase ANA, decrease ANA, or control condition. As predicted, participants in the increase ANA condition acknowledged systemic racism less than those in the decrease ANA and control conditions. Wanting to avoid feeling negative might be one barrier to dismantling racial inequalities. Given the high degree of ANA in the United States, we discuss the implications of this work. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).