What Is Compassion In Value Education?
What is compassion? – Compassion means both the ability to engage with pain or suffering and to having the motivation to ease that pain. Compassion is a quality that involves nurturing, teaching, guiding, mentoring and offering feelings of acceptance and belonging.
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Contents
What is the value of compassion?
The value of compassion enables us to understand ourselves better and others better, and the more we understand others the more we will want to relieve their suffering. Let’s all develop the ability to see things from someone else’s perspective and sympathize with their emotions.
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What is the concept of compassion?
What Is Compassion? – Compassion literally means “to suffer together.” Among emotion researchers, it is defined as the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another’s suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering. Compassion is not the same as empathy or altruism, though the concepts are related.
- While empathy refers more generally to our ability to take the perspective of and feel the emotions of another person, compassion is when those feelings and thoughts include the desire to help.
- Altruism, in turn, is the kind, selfless behavior often prompted by feelings of compassion, though one can feel compassion without acting on it, and altruism isn’t always motivated by compassion.
While cynics may dismiss compassion as touchy-feely or irrational, scientists have started to map the biological basis of compassion, suggesting its deep evolutionary purpose, This research has shown that when we feel compassion, our heart rate slows down, we secrete the “bonding hormone” oxytocin, and regions of the brain linked to empathy, caregiving, and feelings of pleasure light up, which often results in our wanting to approach and care for other people.
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What is compassion with example?
What is compassion? Definition and examples – According to Psychology Today, “Compassion is an empathic understanding of a person’s feelings, accompanied by altruism, or a desire to act on that person’s behalf.” Put simply: Compassion is when you relate to someone’s situation, and you want to help them.
- You see someone in trouble, and you feel like pitching in.
- For example, you might help someone pick up their groceries if they dropped their shopping basket on the floor.
- Every minor act you choose in your day can help balance out negative emotions.
- It’s also different from the basic concept of “kindness” in that the word compassion implies that you see yourself in their shoes.
It’s possible to be kind for practical reasons, without any real empathy for the other’s suffering. But most often, there’s an overlap. Even Plato conflated the two (or maybe the ancient Greeks just had one word). “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.” Plato Compassion is kindness rooted in an appreciation of other human beings as real people who also suffer.
It doesn’t have to look like much. You don’t have to sell off all your worldly belongings and become a social worker. Giving up a seat to a pregnant woman, being polite to retail workers, helping your friend move, taking a second to listen at work — compassion takes many forms. Paying it forward with positive actions over the course of a day can do everything from bringing a smile to someone’s face to preventing burnout, even your own.
A compassionate act can be almost anything, provided the motivation is in the right place. Your ultimate goal should be to prevent the suffering of others. Still, confused about how this is different from empathy? Let’s take a closer look at compassion versus empathy.
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What is compassion in learning?
The Difference Between Compassion and Friendship – Demonstrating compassion for your students is not the same as wanting your students to like you. Many new teachers fall into the trap of desiring their students’ approval, especially when teaching older students who are close to the teacher in age, but that can lead to a lack of mutual respect.
- To show compassion to students is to take the time and effort to understand their perspective, while continuing to make choices that are best for their learning experience.
- Showing compassion does not mean you’re a student’s friend—it means you care about their progress and are invested in their future.
By itself, compassion is an important life skill. As a part of classroom management, compassion can enhance the effectiveness of any strategies you would normally put in place. Compassion gives students an opportunity to trust your choices and have faith in the requests you make of them.
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Why is compassion an important value?
Why is Compassion Important? – Compassion is important because it promotes meaningful connections, facilitates problem-solving, and improves health and wellbeing. Compassion, at its core, is about putting aside judgment and refusing to turn away from challenging situations.
- It’s about understanding the struggles of another person and wanting to help.
- Humans thrive in communities–we are meant to be social.
- And, compassion is a critical tool in creating strong connections and building relationships.
- By truly understanding and caring about what others are experiencing, you become better able to respond in helpful ways.
Compassion can help you approach situations with kindness and interest, an approach that creates trust. From that strong foundation, lasting relationships can be built and potential problems can be tackled together. Compassion is shown to improve health and wellness because of its ability to drive meaningful interactions.
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Why is compassion important?
Compassion helps us connect with others, mend relationships, and move forward while fostering emotional intelligence and well-being. Compassion takes empathy one step further because it harbors a desire for all people to be free from suffering, and it’s imbued with a desire to help.
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What are the qualities of compassion?
Compassion consists of six ‘attributes’: Sensitivity, Sympathy, Empathy, Motivation/Caring, Distress Tolerance, and Non-Judgement.6. ‘The feeling that arises in witnessing another’s suffering and that motivates a subsequent desire to help’ (Goetz et al., 2010, p.
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Why is compassion important as a student?
Compassion makes us more resilient. –
Feeling compassion helps us to overcome empathic distress —or the feeling for others that makes us so upset that we want to run away rather than help. We are better able to handle the strong emotions that occur when faced with others’ suffering.
What is compassion and empathy?
Empathy is feeling another person’s pain, whereas compassion is taking action to relieve the suffering of others. Learn more about the difference between compassion vs. empathy and how to exhibit both in your everyday life.
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Is compassion a value or virtue?
Reconciling attitudes and behaviour – Yet these two may not be so far apart. Attitudes may owe much to our upbringing and genes; but equally, we need skills in developing and applying appropriate attitudes in clinical practice and knowledge both to assess that appropriateness and to develop those attitudes in the first place.
Aristotle writes: 20 Now true virtue cannot exist without prudence any more than prudence without virtueVirtue is not merely a disposition in conformity with the right principle but a disposition in collaboration with the principle, which in human conduct is prudence. So, while Socrates thought that the virtues are principles, we say that they work along with a principle.
So we see from these arguments that it is not possible to be good in the true sense of the word without prudence or to be prudent without virtue. And dispositions can be developed through practice. Lewis 21 uses the analogy of a tennis player: Someone who is not a good tennis player may now and then make a good shot.
- What you mean by a good player is the man whose eye and muscles and nerves have been so trained by making innumerable good shots that they can now be relied on.
- They have a certain tone or quality which is there even when he is not playing, just as a mathematician’s mind has a certain habit and outlook which is there even when he is not doing mathematics.
In the same way, a man who perseveres in doing just actions gets in the end a certain quality of character. Now it is that quality rather than the particular actions which we mean when we talk of a ‘virtue’. Dispositions are formed by repeated intentionality and right actions.
Reich 22 further suggests that neglect of compassion may relate to an inability to explain the meaning of suffering for the individual. An account of compassion must begin, in his view, with a definition and an account of suffering. Suffering is different from pain. It is an anguish which we experience on one level as a threat to our composure, our integrity, and the fulfilment of our intentions but at a deeper level as a frustration to the concrete meaning that we have found in our personal existence.
It is the anguish over the injury or threat of injury to the self – and thus to the meaning of the self that is at the core of suffering. Such anguish may include the sense of unfairness at being deprived of life’s possibilities, or the sense of loss of control or the feeling of shame that might accompany dependency.
Autonomy suffers whether the patient is mute or expressive in response. Compassionate others offer solidarity which can transform suffering. The iteration between the suffering patient and the compassionate person was about narrative and is only possible if the suffering can be understood. Narrative plays its part in palliative medicine in terms of interacting with patients, getting information and helping them to change their perceptions, so they are controlling circumstances and not being controlled.
Recognition, review, revision and reconciliation are part of the narrative, helping to develop a new voice and a new story. Behaviour and manners matter in helping patients, but attitude is key. Compassion is a virtue.
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Is compassion a value or quality?
A Take-Home Message – The biggest take-home message of this article is that compassion matters. There are numerous proven benefits of both self-compassion and compassion toward others, such as increased happiness, improved medical outcomes, reduced stress, reduced psychopathology, and increased social connectedness.
- Compassion plays a vital role in the medical field, as well as those where workers consistently aid the suffering.
- Among patients, compassion has the power to increase coping and healing; and self-compassion is highly beneficial to healthcare workers.
- In high compassion-demanding occupations, it is essential that workers be supported such that the likelihood of compassion fatigue (e.g., burn-out) is reduced.
While some people are more compassionate than others, it is a quality that can be learned as evidenced by research interventions that have shown significant increases in compassion and related qualities. Compassion is an essential element in society and is vital to the survival of the human race.
Individuals and groups with power (i.e., police, policymakers, politicians, etc.) have an opportunity to contribute to more healthy, peaceful communities by practicing and promoting compassion. Serious societal problems (i.e., homelessness and recidivism) have been significantly reduced following compassionate, research-based interventions.
There are many ways in which individuals can practice compassion such as by being altruistic, avoiding judgment, being grateful, and by applying positive parenting techniques. By remembering history— including where compassion was both lacking and in abundance— human beings will be more empowered to make compassionate and meaningful life choices.
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What are the 5 elements of compassion?
Compassion measures – Although nine compassion measures were identified in Strauss et al.’s review, only items from the following four measures were included in this consultation: the compassionate love scale (CLS), Pommier’s compassion scale (CS-P), relational compassion scale (RCS), and Martins et al.’s compassion scale (CS-M).
Excluded from the consultation were the Santa Clara brief compassion scale (SCBCS), compassionate care assessment tool (CCAT), Schwartz Center compassionate care scale (SCCCS), self-compassion scale (SCS), and short form of the self-compassion scale (SCS-SF), The SCBCS was not included because it is a shortened version of the CLS.
Items from the CCAT and the SCCCS were not included because they measure patients’ ratings of compassionate care received from healthcare staff, and were not self-report measures of compassion. The SCS and SCS-SF were not included for several reasons.
First, although compassion towards others and self-compassion have been theorized to be part of the same overarching construct, research findings have generally not supported a relationship between these two constructs. Second, items from the SCS and SCS-SF could not be easily reworded to apply to compassion towards others, or compassion more generally.
Lastly, the CS-P, which was included in this study, was developed based on the factor structure of the SCS and included the same elements (kindness, mindfulness, common humanity). Therefore, although items in the CS-P and SCS are not the same, the way in which these measures conceptualise the key elements underpinning compassion towards others and self-compassion is the same.
- Compassionate love scale,
- The 21-item CLS measures compassionate or altruistic love for close others and all of humankind, including strangers.
- Strauss et al.
- Noted that the CLS includes items related to four of the five elements in their definition: emotionally connecting with other people’s suffering, understanding something about their experience/suffering as a fellow human being, accepting and not judging them (implying tolerance), and being motivated to help them.
Compassion scale, The 24-item CS-P mirrors the factor structure of Neff’s SCS and consists of the same three subscales: kindness versus indifference, common humanity versus separation, and mindfulness versus disengagement. The CS-P contain items which capture four of the five elements in Strauss et al.’s definition: recognising suffering, emotionally connecting with another person’s distress, understanding their experience as a fellow human being, and being motivated to act or acting to alleviate suffering.
Compassion scale, The 10-item CS-M was developed to tap into five aspects of compassion: generosity, hospitality, objectivity, sensitivity, and tolerance across social networks and relationships. Two versions of each item exist. For the first three questions, one version relates specifically to friends and the other to strangers.
For the fourth question, one version relates to friends and the other to family, and for the fifth question, one version relates to the self and the other version to other people. Therefore, this scale consists of five unique items. CS-M items focus exclusively on compassionate acts and therefore capture only the acting to alleviate suffering element of Strauss et al.’s five-element definition.
Relational compassion scale, The 16-item RCS consists of four subscales measuring respondents’ compassion for others, self-compassion, beliefs about how compassionate other people are to each other, and beliefs about how compassionate other people are to them. The four items from the beliefs about how compassionate other people are to each other subscale were not included in the consultation because they do not directly involve the participants themselves.
RCS items capture four of the five elements from Strauss et al.’s review: recognising suffering, accepting and not judging others (implying tolerance), emotionally connecting with their distress, and acting to alleviate suffering.
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Is compassion a value or skill?
What is compassion? Compassion is caring about others and behaving toward them with affection, generosity, and concern. As opposed to empathy (which is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes), compassion means having genuine feelings for other people’s struggles.
- Compassion is a soft skill with practical benefits.
- You don’t have to like or agree with everything someone does, but when you treat others with compassion, they are likely to treat you back in kind.
- Compassion smooths our interactions in the “real” world, and – as technology connects more people from diverse backgrounds – it’s an essential character strength for the virtual world, too.
You can help kids develop compassion by reminding them that there are real people on the other side of the screen, modeling compassion for others, and choosing media that demonstrates compassion. : What is compassion?
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