Emotional Compassion Research Articles

Hope and relationship dynamics among couples faced with their child's cancer: A dyadic phenomenological interpretative analysis

PurposeThe onset of paediatric cancer leads to changes in the functioning of the parental couple. The interactions and interdependence between partners affect their individual and dyadic adjustments. Hope can enable parents to cope with difficulties and alleviate their distress. The aim of this study is to explore how both partners experience their relationship dynamics and hope within the couple. MethodThis qualitative study focused on 7 couples whose child was in remission from cancer; each parent was interviewed separately. The semi-structured interviews were subjected to interpretative phenomenological analysis. ResultsThree themes were found to characterise the experiences of couples faced with their child's cancer. “Captain and first mate" emphasises the gendered and hierarchical distribution of roles based on the analogy of a crew struggling against the threat of cancer. “The emotional compass" focuses on how emotions guide each partner's attempts to meet their own need for emotional expression and that of their partner. "In the same boat, with divergent hope sails" reflects the complex and diverse ways in which hope and forms of hope are expressed, perceived as a resource which is often precious, sometimes viewed as unthinkable because it reflects the violence associated with the despair of the situation and transferred from one parent to the other. DiscussionThese findings highlight the need to focus on the organisation of role, the interaction of emotional needs and the dynamics of hope within parental dyads to optimise the management of couples faced with their child's cancer.

Cultivating Compassion in Jewish-Israeli Kindergartners: The Effectiveness of Mindfulness- and Empathy-Based Interventions As Facilitators of Compassion

ABSTRACT We examined the effectiveness of a mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) compared to a social-emotional empathy-based intervention (EBI), and a passive control group in promoting compassion among Jewish-Israeli kindergartners. Three middle-class public kindergartens were randomly assigned to the MBI (n = 26;M age = 5.03), EBI (n = 24;M age = 5.02), or control groups (n = 24;M age = 5.16; N girls = 40). The interventions lasted 12-weeks. Pre- and post-intervention, children’s cognitive compassion was assessed utilizing computerized continuous performance tasks for attention/impulsivity, and structured observations of attention to teacher and on-task behaviors; emotional compassion was measured with structured observations of prosociality, negative affect, social-emotional difficulties, and aggression; intentional and actual compassion was measured using a compassionate responding paradigm. Research Findings: Results showed that MBI participants decreased impulsivity and improved sustained attention, increased attentiveness to the teacher, and reduced social difficulties and aggression – these effects did not appear for either other group. Additionally, the MBI and EBI participants increased prosociality and compassionate behaviors more than the control group, however the magnitude of change from the MBI was significantly larger. The MBI increased cognitive, emotional, intentional, and behavioral skills and understanding that are essential components necessary to engage in compassion. Practice or Policy: MBIs can be effectively led by teachers and integrated into school curriculum to facilitate just and caring educational communities.

Emotional Compass: Exploring the Socio-Emotional Wealth's Role in Guiding Change Implementation in Family Enterprises!

This research delves into the intricate impact of socio-emotional wealth (SEW) on the behavioral patterns of family firms during the implementation of organizational change. Employing the ambidexterity theory as a conceptual framework, the study scrutinizes 200 responses from proprietors and managers of family firms through a vignette-based investigation. The outcomes illuminate SEW as a pivotal guiding principle and determinant in the decision-making processes related to change. SEW is identified not only as an originating factor but also as a resultant outcome of change dynamics. Family firms demonstrate a propensity to embrace change in anticipation of potential advantages in terms of SEW, juxtaposed with a hesitancy when confronted with perceived risks. Furthermore, the study underscores a continuous reciprocal influence that characterizes the dynamic interplay between SEW and change. This influence extends beyond specific stages, permeating strategic and operational realms within the organizational context.

Examination of preschool teachers' compassion and fear of compassion

This study aims to examine preschool teachers' compassion and fear of compassion. The sample of this survey study consisted of 274 preschool teachers. Personal Information Form, Adult Compassion Scale, and Fear of Compassion Scale were used as data collection tools. Data analysis showed that the compassion level of the preschool teachers was high whereas their fear of compassion level was low. It was also found that the compassion of preschool teachers did not differ significantly based on their gender, age, marital status, educational level, having children, having a pet, having someone to care for at home other than children and their place of residence. Emotional compassion level of preschool teachers who were married and had children was higher than the emotional compassion level of their colleagues who were single and did not have any children. Compassion level of teachers who had 6 to 10 year-professional seniority was significantly higher than their colleagues who had 0 to 5 year-professional seniority. It was found that the fear of compassion level of the preschool teachers did not differ significantly based on their demographic characteristics. Also, a negative significant relationship was found between preschool teachers’ compassion and their fear of compassion. Based on the research findings, it can be suggested that, preschool teachers can be trained on compassion-based activities and compassion can be integrated into daily activities in preschool classrooms. Transfering their knowledege on compassion as a behavior to their classroom activities will help children to take those acts as a role model.

Why Insisting in Being Volunteers? A Practical Case Study Exploring from Both Rational and Emotional Perspectives

This study explored the mechanism on how volunteers as rationalists use rationalism during their cognitive appraisal process when dealing with emotional events in their social helping behavior such as international rescue events. The authors used the triangulation method to include three studies (Study 1 is a qualitative research which explored ways of TCF leader’s inspiring their volunteer workers; Study 2 is a quantitative research on the decision-making process of volunteer individuals involving in international rescue activities; Study 3 is a quantitative research on individuals’ motivation for joining social helping behavior) for validation of Tzu Chi Foundation (TCF), which is a famous non-profit organization worldwide, to prove that volunteers as rationalists rely on the reasonable cognitive appraisal method to substantially evaluate the necessity of social helping behavior, including their emotional responses and arousals. Economic evaluation theory was used to depict volunteers as volunteers as rationalists’ way of cognitive appraisal perspective towards emotional events such as international rescue cases or when participating in activities by non-profit organizations. Accordingly, this study found that volunteers as rationalists adhere to the principles of altruism, egoism, compensation, and reciprocity as part of their cognitive appraisal when responding to emotional situations. The research findings of this study depicted the volunteers’ behavioral intention as volunteers as rationalists in responding to emotional events in the form of NPO helping behaviors and international rescue events. Social helping behaviors often rely on people’s emotional compassion and empathy at the beginning, but social helping behaviors cannot rely solely on emotional support. To create long-term support for non-profit organizations’ action plans, it is still necessary to plan rationally, turning the actions of volunteers into reasonable plans. In this way, even if the volunteers have experienced many difficulties during devotion, hindrance, and stress afterward, they can still keep in a rationalist’ mindset continuously. This paper provided directions for volunteer training for non-profit organizations.

The relation between positive and negative affect becomes more negative in response to personally relevant events.

Can we experience positive (PA) and negative affect (NA) separately (i.e., affective independence), or do these emotional states represent the mutually exclusive ends of a single bipolar continuum (i.e., affective bipolarity)? Building on previous emotion theories, we propose that the relation between PA and NA is not invariable, but rather fluctuates in response to changing situational demands. Specifically, we argue that our affective system shifts from relative independence to stronger bipolarity when we encounter events or situations that activate personally relevant concerns. We test this idea in an experience sampling study, in which we tracked the positive and negative emotional trajectories of 101 first-year university students who received their exam results, an event that potentially triggers a personally significant concern. Using multilevel piecewise regression, we show that running PA-NA correlations become increasingly more negative in the anticipation of results release, indicating stronger affective bipolarity, and ease back toward greater independence as time after this event passes. Furthermore, we show that this dynamic trajectory is particularly apparent for event-related PA and NA, and not affect in general, and that such shifts are partly a function of the importance people attribute to that event. We suggest that such flexible changes in the affect relation may function as an emotional compass by signaling personally relevant information, and create a motivational push to respond to these meaningful events in an appropriate manner. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

An Existential Counseling Case Study: Navigating Several Critical Moments With a Professional Football Player

The current article presents a reflective case study following an applied service delivery experience with a 21-year-old professional footballer. The primary aim of the intervention was to support the client while facing several critical moments (breakdown in relationships, identity, and contract negotiations). This support involved creating a confidential space for her to discuss her values, beliefs, and identity while considering some of the tensions and dilemmas experienced while considering her future. Throughout this process, the first author adopted an existential counseling approach to practice and utilized the Four Dimensions of Existence and Emotional Compass as hermeneutic devices to analyze the client’s presenting challenges. The working relationship lasted for 3 months and spanned eight online sessions. Reflections on practitioner individuation and the value of adopting an existential approach to service delivery are provided.

COACHING TECHNIQUES IN MARKETING TRAINING

The need for new approaches to learning is determined by the requirements for competitiveness in the European Education Area. The need of the modern man for permanent self-development and self-improvement are basic prerequisites for using up-to-date and effective learning approaches. One of the most important criteria for the modernization of vocational education is the modernization of the education process through the introduction of innovative forms of training aimed at increasing student activity and motivation. The use of active training methods and the formation of key competences and attitudes towards lifelong learning are a top priority of the modern school. The role of the teacher is also changing from a communicator of ready-to-assimilate information to a partner in the learning process. The student is becoming an active participant, a partner, a generator of knowledge and ideas. The International Coach Federation (ICF) defines coaching as a partnership between a coach and a client (individual or team) in a process that provokes reflection and creativity and inspires the client to increase their personal and professional potential, which is of particular importance in today's complex and uncertain environment. Coaching enables one to unleash their full potential so that they can succeed, achieve their goals and at the same time feel happy. The atmosphere of partnership that is being created in this process has a strong motivating effect when deciding on an action and choosing means to tackle a challenge. The coaching approach allows for a quick identification of the problems and student's resources - their strengths and weaknesses. The focus is on developing the strengths, which motivates the student and generates a desire for learning and maintaining communication. The innovative thing in coaching is that the teacher stops asking "Why is there a problem?" but rather asks: "How do we achieve what you want?". Thanks to this model of communication and behavior, teachers form in students the same attitude that enables them to define and achieve their goals while accompany them in this process in the most accessible and appropriate manner. The teacher listens actively, asks questions and does not provide ready answers, with such questions evoking thinking and decisions, gives sincere praises and encouragements, follows his/her own "emotional compass" and listens to his/her intuition. The use of coaching techniques in marketing training aims at students acquiring such professional competences in the chosen profession/program of study that will guarantee them finding successful jobs.

Structural Existential Analysis (SEA): A Phenomenological Method for Therapeutic Work

Phenomenology has inspired many forms of therapeutic practice over the past century. This paper summarizes fundamental aspects of phenomenological practice, which are often forgotten. It covers phenomenological, eidetic and transcendental reductions and briefly introduces other aspects of structural existential analysis such as four worlds model, timeline, and emotional compass. The work is brought to life with the case illustration of a client discovering how to make sense of her world by applying phenomenological principles.

Invited Paper Structural Existential Analysis (SEA): A phenomenological research method for counselling psychology

Content & Focus: This paper discusses the foundation of phenomenological research in Husserl’s original ideas. A specific form of phenomenological research, called Structural Existential Analysis (SEA) is then introduced and outlined. The paper details various components of SEA, such as use of the three reductions, dialogical and hermeneutic interviewing, working with bias, the four worlds’ model and its paradoxes, working with the timeline and making us of the emotional compass.

Emotional and Developmental Repair through Psychodrama: Floortime for Grown-Ups

Emotional and Developmental Repair through Psychodrama: Floortime for Grown-Ups

An Inconvenient Truth: The Need to Educate Emotionally Competent Lawyers

The dominant presumption within legal education, that we can teach students to “think like lawyers” with a nearly singular focus on training the analytical mind, is a fiction based on a 19th Century understanding of the human brain that is inherently flawed. Modern neuroscience reveals that the ideal of a dispassionate analytical mind untainted by emotions and personal biases is a fallacy. Nonetheless, this fallacy has spawned an equally faulty premise that still dominates legal education today - that we can train students to be effective lawyers by virtually ignoring students’ emotions and by marginalizing the development of the emotional competencies. These presumptions impose a significant cost on our students and on the legal profession. By marginalizing the importance of emotional competence, we ill-prepare our students to work effectively with the complex interpersonal legal problems they will encounter in the practice of law. As troubling, by dismissing emotions as irrelevant to legal thinking, we ignore that which has true meaning to students – their emotional compass and values. By doing so, we systematically strip students of what is actually meaningful to them as people and ill-prepare them to develop a professional identity that can guide them in their professional careers. This article describes four basic domains of emotional competency that are demanded by the practice of law and reflects on some of the costs we incur by continuing to marginalize emotional competency training in the law school curriculum. The article concludes by offering suggestions for incorporating emotional competency training into the law school curriculum. These ideas range from relatively minor shifts in emphasis in doctrinal and lawyering skills classes to the addition of courses focused exclusively on developing the emotional competencies that are required skill-sets in modern legal practice.

Congress to explore the emotional compass

Congress to explore the emotional compass