Personality Correlates of Compassion: a Cross-Cultural Analysis
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Personality Correlates of Compassion: a Cross-Cultural Analysis Vanessa M. Sinclair 1
&
Gabriela Topa 2 & Donald Saklofske 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Objectives Compassion for others is linked to positive outcomes ranging from stress reduction to prosocial behaviour. However, the personality traits that contribute to compassion have not been well established. We sought to explore the individual differences most strongly related to dispositional compassion in Canada and Spain using the HEXACO model of personality. Methods Canadian (N = 555; 75.8% women) and Spanish (N = 371; 60.8% women) adults aged 17 to 68 years completed the HEXACO-60 personality inventory, a trait emotional intelligence (EI) scale, and a measure of compassion for others using online survey software. The factor structure and cultural invariance of the compassion measure were assessed, and regression analyses were calculated to determine the strongest predictors of compassion. Results In both samples, emotionality was the strongest predictor of compassion, accounting for about 10% of the unique variance in scores. Trait EI, honesty-humility, and openness also predicted compassion, while agreeableness was significant only among Canadians, suggesting there is at least one cross-cultural difference in personality antecedents. Conclusions Emotionality and emotional intelligence were strongly linked to compassionate individuals in two distinct cultures, and honesty-humility and openness were weakly predictive as well. Agreeableness was only related among Canadians, suggesting that while the degree to which agreeableness predicts compassion is dependent on the cultural context, the personality antecedents of compassion are similar across cultures. Keywords Compassion . Positive psychology . Personality . Cross-cultural psychology
Over the past two decades, compassion has emerged as a focus of scientific inquiry (Kirby et al. 2017; Oman 2011). While most compassion research is situated in medicine (e.g., Duarte et al. 2016; Sinclair et al. 2017), social work (e.g., Brill and Nahmani 2017; Collins and Garlington 2017), and clinical psychology (e.g., Steindl et al. 2018) domains, what is known so far about compassion in daily life is also promising. Dispositional compassion increases resilience to trauma (Fredrickson et al. 2003) and stress (Pace et al. 2008), and encourages prosocial behaviour (Leiberg et al. 2011). Furthermore, compassion ‘interventions’ can increase positive emotions (Fredrickson et al. 2008; Klimecki et al. 2012; Mongrain et al. 2011), enhance selfesteem (Mongrain et al. 2011), and promote social connectedness (Hutcherson et al. 2008).
* Vanessa M. Sinclair [email protected] 1
Western University, London, Canada
2
National Distance Education University/Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Madrid, Spain
In philosophical and spiritual scholarship, there has been interest in compassion for thousands of years. Compassion features prominently in Bud
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