Closeness or compassion? Relatedness and causal control influence helping via distinct pathways.

Why do people feel compassion? Two largely separate research literatures - one driven by evolutionary psychology and one driven by attribution theory - have shown that feelings of compassion for needy individuals and subsequent helping are predicted by both genetic relatedness and causal control. Research also suggests that emotional closeness, rather than compassion, motivates help for family. In two studies, we tested the role of genetic relatedness and control on cognitive and emotional mediators of helping.

Sympathy and responses to suffering: Similarity and variation in China and the United States.

Feeling sympathy in response to suffering appears to be a universal human experience, but we know very little about how it is experienced in non-Western cultures. In the present studies, we show that sympathy is a complex emotion that has a distinct appraisal theme of wanting to alleviate suffering and that cultural variation occurs in interpretations of suffering and behavioral responses. In particular, the present studies show that sympathy is conceptualized similarly in both the United States and China (Studies 1 and 2), and that it is elicited by undeserved suffering in both cultures (Study 2), is experienced as unpleasant (Study 2), and motivates a desire to help others (Studies 2, 3, and 4).

What is shared, what is different? Core relational themes and expressive displays of eight positive emotions.

Understanding positive emotions' shared and differentiating features can yield valuable insight into the structure of positive emotion space and identify emotion states, or aspects of emotion states, that are most relevant for particular psychological processes and outcomes. We report two studies that examined core relational themes (Study 1) and expressive displays (Study 2) for eight positive emotion constructs--amusement, awe, contentment, gratitude, interest, joy, love, and pride. Across studies, all eight emotions shared one quality: high positive valence.

Social class rank, threat vigilance, and hostile reactivity.

Lower-class individuals, because of their lower rank in society, are theorized to be more vigilant to social threats relative to their high-ranking upper-class counterparts. This class-related vigilance to threat, the authors predicted, would shape the emotional content of social interactions in systematic ways. In Study 1, participants engaged in a teasing interaction with a close friend.

Compassion: an evolutionary analysis and empirical review.

What is compassion? And how did it evolve? In this review, we integrate 3 evolutionary arguments that converge on the hypothesis that compassion evolved as a distinct affective experience whose primary function is to facilitate cooperation and protection of the weak and those who suffer. Our empirical review reveals compassion to have distinct appraisal processes attuned to undeserved suffering; distinct signaling behavior related to caregiving patterns of touch, posture, and vocalization; and a phenomenological experience and physiological response that orients the individual to social approach. This response profile of compassion differs from those of distress, sadness, and love, suggesting that compassion is indeed a distinct emotion.