COMPASSION MOTIVATIONS: DISTINGUISHING SUBMISSIVE COMPASSION FROM GENUINE COMPASSION AND ITS ASSOCIATION WITH SHAME, SUBMISSIVE BEHAVIOR, DEPRESSION, ANXIETY AND STRESS

Recent research has suggested that being compassionate and helpful to others is linked to well-being. However, people can pursue compassionate motives for different reasons, one of which may be to be liked or valued. Evolutionary theory suggests this form of helping may be related to submissive appeasing behavior and therefore could be negatively associated with well-being. To explore this possibility we developed a new scale called the submissive compassion scale and compared it to other established submissive and shame-based scales, along with measures of depression, anxiety and stress in a group of 192 students. As predicted, a submissive form of compassion (being caring in order to be liked) was associated with submissive behavior, shame-based caring, ego-goals and depression, anxiety, and stress. In contrast, compassionate goals and compassion for others were not. As research on compassion develops, new ways of understanding the complex and mixed motivations that can lie behind compassion are required. The desire to be helpful, kind, and compassionate, when it arises from fears of rejection and desires for acceptance, needs to be explored.