Abstract
BackgroundCompassionate love is defined as awareness and understanding of one’s suffering, connecting with the distress, and being emotionally and cognitively moved to alleviate suffering. The Compassionate Love Scale for Humanity (CLS-H) was developed to measure compassion towards strangers who need help and/or are vulnerable. The present study aimed to develop an abbreviated version of the CLS-H using item response theory to provide a precise and non-redundant compassion measure for use in research and practice.MethodsUndergraduate students (N = 790; 65.8% females) completed the CLS-H and other measures intended to establish external validity. Items for the short version were selected based on high amounts of information and taking into account the content coverage of the construct.ResultsThe shortened scale consisted of 9 items and performed well in measuring a large spectrum of the underlying construct with acceptable reliability. In terms of validity, the previously observed pattern of correlations was confirmed demonstrating positive associations between compassionate love and measures of self-esteem, positive affect, and life satisfaction, as well as negative associations with negative affect and anxiety.ConclusionsUsing IRT, we obtained a brief, precise, and valid tool for assessing compassionate love.
Highlights
Compassionate love is defined as awareness and understanding of one’s suffering, connecting with the distress, and being emotionally and cognitively moved to alleviate suffering
Compassion involves recognizing a commonality with the sufferer, acknowledging that we too could find ourselves in a similar position and implicates being able to tolerate uncomfortable feelings that might be elicited by the person in distress [1]
There are some overlaps with associated concepts, compassion and compassionate love have been defined as distinct constructs including thoughts, emotions, and behaviors directed to relatives, strangers, and humanity itself [1]
Summary
Compassionate love is defined as awareness and understanding of one’s suffering, connecting with the distress, and being emotionally and cognitively moved to alleviate suffering. The Compassionate Love Scale for Humanity (CLS-H) was developed to measure compassion towards strangers who need help and/or are vulnerable. Compassion is described as being aware of someone’s suffering and connecting with the distress (i.e., emotional resonance), understanding the universality of suffering in human experience, and being emotionally and cognitively moved to alleviate suffering. There are some overlaps with associated concepts (e.g., empathy, kindness, and altruism), compassion and compassionate love have been defined as distinct constructs including thoughts, emotions, and behaviors directed to relatives, strangers, and humanity itself [1]. In contrast with empathy which may apply to a broader range of emotions like joy or anger, compassion is felt in response to suffering. Compassion includes elements beyond kindness, including recognizing and being touched by suffering; and likewise, kindness is different from compassion because kindness is not linked only to suffering [1]
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