Expanding the Limits of Compassion: A Motivated Emotion Regulation Account of Compassion Collapse

扩大同情心的限度：同情心崩溃的动机性情绪调节解释

• 批准号: 1450943
• 负责人: Christopher Cameron
• 金额: $ 33.68万
• 依托单位: University of Iowa
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-03-15 至 2017-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1450943&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Expanding; Limits; Compassion; Motivated; Emotion

Compassion -- an emotion that motivates people to care about and relieve the suffering of others -- can lead to charity, cooperation, and forgiveness. Yet compassion is susceptible to a surprising bias: people typically feel more compassion for one victim than many victims. This compassion collapse is compelling scientifically, because it conflicts with how people think they would and should respond to mass suffering, and socially, because it highlights barriers to compassionate action. Why does compassion collapse occur? According to the motivated emotion regulation account developed by Daryl Cameron (University of Iowa) and colleagues, compassion collapse results from motivated choices to avoid compassion for multiple victims because of anticipated costs. For example, people might worry that attending to the suffering of many victims will be more emotionally overwhelming than that of a single victim, and therefore proactively down-regulate compassion to avoid emotional exhaustion. The proposed research will test this theoretical model of compassion collapse. A first series of studies will examine how anticipated affective costs -- i.e., the fear of being emotionally exhausted and overwhelmed by compassion -- can motivate emotion regulation processes that create compassion collapse. A second set of studies will test whether shifting these motivations can reverse compassion collapse. These results would further our understanding of the motivational influences on moral outcomes. Given that compassion collapse may influence pro-social behavior, philanthropy and policy decisions, it is important to understand why this effect occurs and how to mitigate its effects.Previous research by this research team has shown that motivated emotion regulation contributes to compassion collapse. Building on this work, the proposed research will examine how the affective costs of compassion predict spontaneous use of emotion regulation processes, and how this in turn leads to increased compassion collapse for multiple (vs. single) victims of a crisis. These experiments will examine emotion regulation in three ways: employment of strategies to avoid or limit exposure to information about victims; use of the psychophysiological measure of respiratory sinus arrhythmia as a marker of autonomic emotion regulation; and through manipulation of the emotion regulation strategy of reappraisal. The proposed research will also test manipulations designed to increase one's motivation to feel compassion, and therefore reverse compassion collapse. This will be done by increasing the perception that compassion is healthy; decreasing the perception that compassion has a limited capacity; activating the moral self-concept; and increasing self-compassion. Together, this research can make transformative advances in the science of compassion by revealing how motivation shapes the use of emotion regulation to create compassion collapse. By testing strategies to reverse compassion collapse, this research may have implications for increasing compassion and philanthropy toward challenging social problems in the real world.

同情 - 一种激励人们关心和缓解他人苦难的情绪 - 可能导致慈善，合作和宽恕。然而，同情心容易受到令人惊讶的偏见：人们通常比许多受害者感到同情。这种同情心的崩溃是科学的，因为它与人们认为他们会和应对大规模苦难和社会的反应相抵触，因为它突出了采取富有同情心的行动的障碍。为什么同情崩溃？根据达里尔·卡梅伦（Daryl Cameron）（爱荷华大学）和同事开发的动机情绪监管叙述，同情心崩溃是由于积极的选择而导致的，以避免由于预期成本而避免对多个受害者的同情心。例如，人们可能会担心参加许多受害者的苦难会比单个受害者更具情感上的压倒性，因此主动下调同情心，以避免情绪疲惫。拟议的研究将测试这种同情崩溃的理论模型。第一系列的研究将研究预期的情感成本（即，对情绪上的疲惫和被同情心的恐惧如何促进情绪调节过程，从而造成同情心崩溃。第二组研究将测试转移这些动机是否会逆转同情心。这些结果将进一步理解对道德成果的动机影响。鉴于同情的崩溃可能会影响亲社会的行为，慈善事业和政策决策，因此重要的是要了解为什么会发生这种效果以及如何减轻其效果。该研究团队的预防研究表明，动机的情绪调节会导致同情心崩溃。在这项工作的基础上，拟议的研究将研究同情的情感成本如何预测情绪调节过程的自发使用，以及这又如何导致危机的多个（与单身）受害者增加同情心。这些实验将以三种方式检查情绪调节：雇用策略以避免或限制有关受害者信息的暴露；将呼吸窦性心律不齐的心理生理学度量用作自主性情绪调节的标志；通过操纵重新评估的情绪调节策略。拟议的研究还将测试旨在增加一个人感到同情的动力，从而逆转同情心的操作。这将通过增加对同情健康的看法来完成。减少对同情能力有限的看法；激活道德自我概念；并增加自我同情。这项研究可以通过揭示动力如何塑造情绪调节以造成同情崩溃的方式来实现同情科学的变革性进步。通过测试逆转同情崩溃的策略，这项研究可能对增加同情心和慈善事业的影响对现实世界中的社会问题挑战。