Compassion

Compassion is a social emotion that motivates people to go out of their way to relieve the physical, mental, or emotional pains of others and themselves. Compassion is recognizing, relating, and responding affirmatively to emotional aspects of the suffering of others. Compassion involves "feeling for another" and is a precursor to empathy, the "feeling as another" capacity (as opposed to sympathy, the "feeling towards another"). In common parlance, active compassion is the desire to alleviate another's suffering. When based on notions such as fairness, justice, and interdependence, it may be considered partially rational in nature. Compassion involves allowing oneself to be moved by suffering to help alleviate and prevent it. An act of compassion is one that is intended to be helpful. Other virtues that harmonize with compassion include patience, wisdom, kindness, perseverance, warmth, and resolve. It is often, though not inevitably, the key component in altruism. The difference between sympathy and compassion is that the former responds to others' suffering with sorrow and concern whereas the latter responds with warmth and care. An article in Clinical Psychology Review suggests that "compassion consists of three facets: noticing, feeling, and responding". This article reviews compassion's etymology and theories of compassion and then reviews its core connections to psychology, neuroscience, medicine, and various religious and philosophical traditions.