Improving Physical and Mental Health through Compassionate Love Actions

Improving Physical Health through Compassionate Love Actions

 Compassionate love has been defined by Underwood as the type of love that values the other at a fundamental level. A variety of antecedents and consequences of compassionate love have been studied in the field of psychology and positive sociology.  For example, spirituality and positive self-perception has been studied as a potential antecedent for compassionate love. Compassionate love has shown to lessen anger and pain, reduce stress, and increase self-efficacy. Within the field of neurobiology, the ability of prosocial behaviors to act as a protection against physical ailments has been studied. There is consensus that these type of behaviors act as a buffer between stressful life events and physician-diagnosed physical illness.

 This current study continues the development of a better understanding of how positive inner thoughts (specifically self-esteem, self-compassion, self-forgiveness and spirituality) combined with prosocial behaviors (specifically forgiveness, empathy, sympathy, altruism, compassion and compassionate love) can improve perceived health of individuals.  We first developed a conceptual definition of compassionate love based on Pitirim Sorokin’s early scientific exploration of love in the 50’s. We then developed the Sorokin Compassionate Love Inventory (SCLI) to measure compassionate love and its five subcomponents, namely intense love, extensive love, pure love, adequate love and love of a long duration. We validated the SCLI with a sample of 2789 individuals using a convenient non-probability online sampling method over a three-month period. Together with the SCLI, participants were asked to complete the following validated scales: the Self Compassion Scale, the Heartland Forgiveness scale, the Self-Esteem scale, the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale, the Davis Empathy Scale, the Lee Sympathy Scale and the Santa Clara Compassion Scale. Participants were also asked to rate their own health.

 The validation of the SCLI was done with a combination of exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Results indicated a valid and reliable scale with coefficient alpha’s ranging between 0.75 and 0.85. The validation concluded with a second-order CFA model for compassionate love that was then used together with the other predictors to test a pattern of causal structures linking positive inner thoughts and pro-social behaviors to perceived health. Based on the squared multiple correlations, the different thoughts and behaviors were able to explain 27% of the variance in health. The strongest positive pathways to self-rated health were self-compassion and self-forgiveness, empathy, and compassionate love actions shown toward others. The goodness of fit statistics for the final model (X²/DF=6.16, GFI=0.98, CFI=0.99; RMSEA=0,04; SRMR=0.03) indicated good model fit.

 This study illustrates the positive relationship between positive inner thoughts, pro-social behaviors and health. Within the field of clinical social work, it is important to teach social work students an awareness of the interconnectedness between positive inner thoughts, pro-social behaviors and health. Therapeutic models focusing on the development of these thoughts and behaviors (e.g. Compassionate Mind Training) can greatly benefit the work of clinicians in health settings.