Testing a Goal-Commitment Model of Compassion

People are often exposed to the unfair suffering of others. Learning of starving children, encountering victims of natural disasters, or knowing of others' economic hardships brings out in people a strong emotional reaction most commonly described as compassion. The experience of compassion typically leads to a desire to help. Yet, people do not always act on those desires. Instead, the experience of compassion sometimes causes anxiety and motivates people to protect their own interests and to avoid being helpful to others. This project considers some fundamental properties of social cognition that may help to account for these divergent responses to compassion -- to help or not to help. The main focus is on the concept of goal commitment. The desire to help may not translate into actual helping unless one decides on a way to put that goal into action. This project aims to identify simple but effective approaches to assist people in acting on their desire to help suffering others. A series of experiments test whether thinking about helping goals as commitments rather than mere desires will lower the barriers to helping. Close relationships, families, groups, and entire societies depend upon people's willingness to make sacrifices on behalf of others. By shedding light on the mechanisms for such behavior and the conditions under which it is likely to occur, this project may open up new possibilities for research and interventions that promote helping behavior in a variety of settings. Witnessing the undeserved suffering of others frequently elicits multiple conflicting goals. One such goal is the desire to help suffering others. A competing goal is the desire to protect one's self and one's resources of time, money, or effort. Based on theoretical models of goal pursuit, this project focuses on the role of goal commitment in resolving such multiple conflicting goals. Five studies test the prediction that committing to a helping goal will lead people to reduce their concerns with self-protection goals, thereby reducing self-focused anxiety and increasing helping behavior in the form of charitable donations. The studies examine the effects of exposure to suffering, goal commitment, and the cost of helping on charitable giving. The studies also feature assessments of physiological threat as a supplement to self-report measures of distress and anxiety. In the absence of goal commitment, it is expected that exposure to suffering will increase anxiety and fail to elicit donations. In the presence of goal commitment, it is expected that exposure to suffering will not increase anxiety and will promote donations. By examining the connections between compassion and anxiety reduction, the research could inform interventions that increase the health benefits of social engagement. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.