Happiness, love, and compassion as antidotes for anxiety

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study compared the relative effectiveness of happiness, love, and compassion as antidotes for anxiety. Participants were 208 undergraduates averaging 18.9 years of age, 58% female and 42% male. They self-reported emotions at baseline, after an anxiety induction, and after a happiness, love, or compassion induction; emotions were induced by recalling autobiographical memories. All three positive emotions significantly reduced anxiety, but happiness and love yielded significantly greater reductions than compassion. As a secondary dependent variable, anger showed a similar pattern of results, being significantly reduced by happiness and love but not by compassion. Thus, the relative effectiveness of these positive emotions in relieving both anxiety and anger was not a function of their superordinate emotion category (happiness versus love), but rather was a function of the specific emotion. The findings suggest that we need to better attend to differences between love and compassion in theory, research and practice.