The Role of Compassion in Altruistic Helping and Punishment Behavior
Open accessAbstract
Compassion, the emotional response of caring for another who is suffering and that results in motivation to relieve suffering, is thought to be an emotional antecedent to altruistic behavior. However, it remains unclear whether compassion enhances altruistic behavior in a uniform way or is specific to sub-types of behavior such as altruistic helping of a victim or altruistic punishment of a transgressor. We investigated the relationship between compassion and subtypes of altruistic behavior using third-party paradigms where participants (1) witnessed an unfair economic exchange between a transgressor and a victim, and (2) had the opportunity to either spend personal funds to either economically (a) help the victim or (b) punish the transgressor. In Study 1, we examined whether individual differences in self-reported empathic concern (the emotional component of compassion) was associated with greater altruistic helping or punishment behavior in two independent samples. For participants who witnessed an unfair transaction, trait empathic concern was associated with greater helping of a victim and had no relationship to punishment. However, in those who decided to punish the transgressor, participants who reported greater empathic concern decided to punish less. In Study 2, we directly enhanced compassion using short-term online compassion meditation training to examine whether altruistic helping and punishment were increased after two weeks of training. Compared to an active reappraisal training control group, the compassion training group gave more to help the victim and did not differ in punishment of the transgressor. Together, these two studies suggest that compassion is related to greater altruistic helping of victims and is not associated with or may mitigate altruistic punishment of transgressors.
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Greater prosocial behavior (charitable donations) were correlated with changes in the inferior parietal cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
“Weng et al. (2015) found that greater pro-social behavior (charitable donations) were correlated with changes in the inferior parietal cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.”
From A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of the Effects of Meditation on Empathy, Compassion, and Prosocial Behaviors (2018) · cites this paper as Weng et al., 2015
The Study 1 Results report a correlation between empathic concern and spending in an economic Helping Game, not between charitable donations and changes in brain regions. The General Introduction mentions neural responses in a previous study, but our copy does not report the claimed correlation. Searches for “inferior parietal,” “dorsolateral prefrontal,” and “charitable donations” found no passage establishing it; page numbers were unavailable. (LLM, conf=0.76)
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- Authors
- Weng, H. Y., Fox, A. S., Hessenthaler, H. C., Stodola, D. E., & Davidson, R. J.
- Affiliations
- University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
- Corresponding author
- Weng, Helen Y.
- Davidson, Richard J.
- Venue
- PLOS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2015-12-10
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- e0143794
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4675554
- OpenAlex
- W2191876901
- Cited by
- 132
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 21 · 2020: 49 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 2
- FWCI
- 19.39
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Fetzer Institute
- University of Wisconsin-Madison (T32-MH018931)
- Mind and Life Institute
- Osher Center for Integrative Medicine
- Curtin University of Technology
- National Institutes of Health (AT003997)
- University of California, San Francisco
- National Institute of Mental Health (T32MH018931)
- National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (T32AT006956, P01AT004952, T32AT003997)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Emotions and Moral Behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
- Keywords
- compassion, altruistic punishment, empathic concern, trait empathy
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Altruism, Empathy, Female, Games, Experimental, Humans, Male, Punishment, Young Adult
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