Differences in the semantics of prosocial words: an exploration of compassion and kindness

The study of prosocial behaviour has accelerated greatly in the last 20 years. Researchers are exploring different domains of prosocial behaviour such as compassion, kindness, caring, cooperation, empathy, sympathy, love, altruism and morality. While these constructs can overlap, and are sometimes used interchangeably, they also have distinctive features that require careful elucidation. This paper discusses some of the controversies and complexities of describing different (prosocial) mental states, followed by a study investigating the differences between two related prosocial concepts: compassion and kindness. For the study, a scenario-based questionnaire was developed to assess the degree to which a student (N = 222) and a community (N = 112) sample judged scenarios in terms of compassion or kindness. Subsequently, participants rated emotions (e.g. sadness, anxiety, anger, disgust, joy) associated with each scenario. Both groups clearly distinguished kindness from compassion in the scenarios on the basis of suffering. In addition, participants rated compassion-based scenarios as significantly higher on sadness, anger, anxiety and disgust, whereas kindness-based scenarios had higher levels of joy. As a follow-up, a further sample (29 male, 63 female) also rated compassionate scenarios as involving significantly more suffering compared to the kindness scenarios. Although overlapping concepts, compassion and kindness are clearly understood as different processes with different foci, competencies and emotion textures. This has implications for research in prosocial behaviour, and the cultivation of kindness and compassion for psychotherapy and in general.N/

Human altruism from an evolutionary perspective

According to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection altruistic behavior appears to be a paradox. Because altruistic behaviors are defined as acts of transferring resources to another person without getting any resources back (at least in the short run) it could be argued that any altruistic behavior should have been extinguished throughout human evolution because such behavior decreases the fitness of a given actor (i.e., the number of his or her offspring). In this article we first review the theories of kin altruism and reciprocal altruism which are often used by evolutionary theorists to explain altruistic behavior. However, these theories are not able to explain all human altruistic behavior. For that reason we focus on two other evolutionary theories that are rarely taken into account by evolutionary theorists: The commitment model by Frank and the theory by Miller which explains human altruism as a by-product of sexual selection. Both approaches emphasize that a fitness enhancing effect of altruistic behavior can only be observed if a given actor does not act altruistically for strategic reasons, but if his or her altruistic, behavior is the product of an autonomous altruistic motive