Measuring competitive self-focus perspective taking, submissive compassion and compassion goals

Abstract

Research in the last 20 years has provided good evidence that developing compassion-focused motives for self and others has a range of benefits. However, people can behave in prosocial ways for different reasons, not all of which are genuinely care focused. This paper reports research comparing submissive compassion (being helpful to be liked) to “genuine” compassion in relation to domains of empathy and perspective taking. We developed a new short (5 item) self-report scale (the competitive perspective taking scale) to explore how people might use perspective taking for self-focused reasons. We investigated its association with validated empathy and compassion measures. One hundred ninety nine students completed a range of questionnaires including a new short (5 item) self-report scale ‘The Competitive Perspective Taking Scale’ online or on paper at the end of lectures or during lecture breaks. Compassionate goals were positively correlated with the empathy quotient and its subscales. However, submissive compassion had a small negative correlation with the social skills subscale on the empathy quotient and was unrelated to other subscales. In addition, submissive compassion, unlike compassionate goals, was associated with submissive behaviour, shame, self-criticism, depression, anxiety and stress. Competitive perspective taking was positively correlated with cognitive empathy on the emotional quotient but not emotional reactivity or social skills. These findings indicate there are individual differences in compassion motivation and the competencies of compassion, such as empathy and that these should be measured separately. In addition, the findings suggests that the higher peoples cognitive perspective taking, the more they are able to recognise their ability to use empathy for beneficial reasons.