Poster Presentation 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

Making Compassion Useful: The Identification Of Unintended Negative Consequences As A Result Of Compassionate Action And The Proactive Approach To Limit These (#789)

Casey Squires 1
  1. The University of Sydney, Sydney

Compassion allows members of society to feel connected, engage in cooperative behaviours, and enhance wellbeing in self and others. Despite this, compassion is a poorly defined construct, with little consensus between theorists as to the objective, intention or process of compassion. It is important that this construct is more closely defined as compassion has significant implications for interpersonal relationships, organisations and how society evolves and changes. Compassion is based on a ‘selfless intention of freeing others from suffering’. However, most research studies focus on the well-being benefits afforded to the provider of compassion, rather than the ‘freeing of suffering’ that a receiver might obtain. Furthermore, when someone engages in a compassionate act, which is then received negatively by the intended recipient, is this still considered a useful expression of compassion regardless of the oppositional perspectives between the provider and recipient? This presentation outlines two key moderators, which assist in allowing the provider to find a useful and effective expression of compassion. In order to enhance wellbeing in self and others, these moderators ensure that as human beings we can match our intention with the outcome, and guarantee that compassion is an effective positive psychology construct which alleviates suffering for another