Living the well-lived life is a prized and sometimes elusive-appearing goal. While much of the world’s population still struggles to meet basic needs, widespread inequity making the meaning-and-purposed-based eudaimonic existence problematic, nevertheless understanding what contributes to greater personal satisfaction is a critically important subject.
Ultimately, as more people with access to resources embrace compassion and themselves flourish, there is reason to believe that greater focus on common humanity and the imperative to reduce overall suffering may help a greater and greater number of people.
Common humanity and widespread suffering become harder to deny, as social media and information technology confront us daily with reports of rising rates of mental illness and burnout, escalating global woes1, and increasing calls for the tools and resources to make effective change possible, by the most rarefied echelons of leadership to the grassiest roots of community.
While there is ample research on compassion, flourishing, and character as separate aspects, research on their interrelationships is less developed. With this in mind, Paul Verhaeghen, in a recent paper in the Journal of Happiness Studies (2024), engaged more than 11,000 people in survey-based research, in which participants reported on factors known to be most critical.
The primary research questions asked had to do with the relationship between virtues, flourishing, and compassion-related factors, and, specifically, how they related to the virtue caring. What follow are the core factors looked at.
Caring. Fairness, forgiveness, kindness, gratitude, love, and spirituality.
Inquisitiveness. Appreciation of beauty and excellence, curiosity, creativity, love of learning, and perspective.
Self-Control. Honesty, judgment, perseverance, prudence, and self-regulation.
The three virtues were distilled out of a prior set of 24 character traits, from positive psychology work: creativity, curiosity, judgment, love of learning, perspective, bravery, perseverance, honesty, zest, love, kindness, social intelligence, teamwork, fairness, leadership, forgiveness, humility, prudence, self-regulation, appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, humor, and spirituality.
Flourishing refers to deeper forms of meaning and life satisfaction, rather than just pleasure-seeking. Flourishing is measured with the eight-item Flourishing Scale2.
Flourishing. Purpose and meaning in life, life satisfaction, optimism, competence, engagement in activities, relationships, contributing to others’ happiness, and being respected by others.
There are many tools for measuring compassion for oneself and others, covering many different dimensions. In this study, the author focused on the most statistically-significant components of general and self-compassion.
General compassion
Cognitive. Recognizing suffering, and appreciating common humanity.
Emotional. Ability to empathize.
Motivational. Willingness to act.
Self-compassion
Compassion for oneself. Seeing one's own failings as part of the human condition, and trying to be understanding and kind to parts of our personality we don't like.
Self-criticism. Tending to obsess or fixate on what's wrong, and feeling alone with failure when failing at something that seems important.
1. Virtue, compassion, and flourishing are intertwined. The current study confirmed many important findings of prior research, for example the importance of the basic factors for compassion and the relationship among different views. Interestingly, no measure of resilience was included, but that would be useful in future studies.
2. Most people are compassionate. The majority of participants scored relatively high on all four general compassion variables. This is a hopeful finding, supporting the optimistic observation that most people are compassionate. It was less clear, however, whether most people are motivated to act, even if they are likely to be more cognitively and emotionally-compassionate. How to motivate people is a pressing and complicated question.
3. Self-criticism stands out. While the other factors were interrelated, self-criticism was in some cases associated with positive factors and in others with negative ones. It was reverse-correlated with self-compassion, for example—but positively correlated with empathy, common humanity, and recognition of suffering. This suggests a potential area for intervention: If compassion for others hinges on decreased self-compassion, there may be room to improve self-compassion along with compassion for others. Indeed, work on general compassion finds benefit for the individual in decreased depression and improved self-esteem (Mongrain, Chin & Shapira, 2011).
Self-compassion and self-criticism are not two sides of the same coin; although both are related to well-being, they are distinctly different and need to be addressed using complementary approaches. Self-criticism is a tool that must be wielded wisely. It can drive compassion and change, partly a consequence of positive processes such as inquisitiveness. At the same time, it can be part of pathological processes like depression and self-blame, trauma, and problems with one’s sense of self.
4. Caring is the highest-impact virtue. Caring is associated with all aspects of general and self-compassion, and, of the three virtues, it is the one that most highly predicted flourishing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, women rated higher on caring than men.
5. Inquisitiveness had the second largest impact. Inquisitiveness was moderately correlated with flourishing. Inquisitiveness was associated with empathy, common humanity, and self-criticism. Inquisitiveness, paralleling the personality trait of openness to experience and a general tendency toward mindfulness, made it easier to be aware of a range of experiences, both positive and negative. As a general orientation toward life, the virtue of inquisitiveness makes it harder to use avoidance to cope and easier to learn and be creative. Inquisitiveness is necessary for living an examined life, but not everything we examine will make us feel good, highlighting the difference between eudaemonic and hedonic goals. Notably, giftedness is correlated with the personality trait of openness to experience.
6. How self-control comes into play. Of the three virtues, self-control, while important in many areas, accounted for less flourishing but was nevertheless significant, connected with empathy, self-compassion and self-criticism. Those higher in self-control showed greater honesty, perseverance, self-regulation and judiciousness, for example, in combination with self-criticism alongside self-compassion. Men, on average, had high self-control scores.
7. Primary contributors to flourishing. Overall, the factors measured in this study accounted for nearly 50 percent of flourishing, a robust finding. Caring, inquisitiveness, and self-control together accounted for 35 percent of flourishing, with statistical weights 0.38, 0.22, and 0.13, respectively. The remaining 15 percent of flourishing came from compassion and self-compassion. Flourishing was most strongly predicted by caring and self-compassion, and then self-criticism, common humanity and inquisitiveness. Analysis suggested that compassion for oneself and others partially accounted for the relationship between the three virtues and flourishing. Notably, willingness to act did not contribute to flourishing.
8. Aspects of flourishing, virtue, and compassion change across the lifespan. Flourishing increased until the age of 60, on average, and then either leveled off or increased more sharply. Self-control did not change with age. Caring and inquisitiveness both increased with age, staying neck-and-neck until about age 50, when inquisitiveness leveled off. Empathy, common humanity, and recognizing suffering rose until age 40, and then declined gradually, whereas willingness to act declined more abruptly around that age. Self-compassion rose with age, with a corresponding but smaller decline in self-criticism.
The high-level take-home messages here are that all three of the virtues of caring, inquisitiveness, and self-control are related to flourishing. Depending on individual personality and needs, caring and inquisitiveness stand out in relation to compassion for oneself and others as possible drivers of flourishing. Self-criticism comes up as an independent factor, and can work constructively or destructively.
It's important to consider how these factors can best be put into play. for personal action. The individual character traits sketch fine-grained areas where attention may be useful. Research shows, for instance, that working on zest can help with chronic pain4.
Developing a personalized plan based on this and related work may help people move toward flourishing. In general, cultivating compassion for oneself and others may be a common pathway for positive change, associated with improvement in depression, anxiety, and other clinical conditions (Craig, Hiskey & Spector, 2020; Luo et al., 2021), as well as with alleviating burnout in personal and professional settings (Alcaraz-Córdoba et al., 2024; Jefferson, Shires & McAloon, 2020). Working out how to motivate people to act to alleviete their suffering and that of others is an area of pressing need.
References
1. Can Embracing Complexity Foster World Peace?
2. Flourshing
3. Giftedness and Experiential Openness
4. How Cultivating Zest May Alleviate Chronic Pain
Citations
Alcaraz-Córdoba, A., Ruiz-Fernández, M.D., Ibáñez-Masero, O. et al. The efficacy of compassion training programmes for healthcare professionals: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Curr Psychol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-05618-0
Catriona Craig, Syd Hiskey & Aimee Spector (2020) Compassion focused therapy: a systematic review of its effectiveness and acceptability in clinical populations, Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics, 20:4, 385-400, DOI: 10.1080/14737175.2020.1746184
Jefferson, F.A., Shires, A. & McAloon, J. Parenting Self-compassion: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Mindfulness 11, 2067–2088 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-020-01401-x
Luo, X., Che, X., Lei, Y. et al. Investigating the Influence of Self-Compassion-Focused Interventions on Posttraumatic Stress: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Mindfulness 12, 2865–2876 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-021-01732-3
Mongrain, M., Chin, J.M. & Shapira, L.B. Practicing Compassion Increases Happiness and Self-Esteem. J Happiness Stud 12, 963–981 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-010-9239-1
Verhaeghen, P. Thriving in Openness, Care, and Compassion: How Virtue and Compassion for Self and Others Relate to Flourishing. J Happiness Stud 25, 19 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-024-00725-y
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