Compassion is partially selfless: Public self-concept accessibility following compassion and threat

Drawing from the largely separate literatures on compassion and the self-concept, we hypothesized that compassion would lead to literal selflessness in the form of reduced cognitive accessibility of the public self-concept. Across two studies, we found preliminary support for this hypothesis. Study 1 (N = 154) found that a compassion induction, relative to control conditions, reduced accessibility of the public self, but did not impact accessibility of the true self. Study 2 (N = 172) employed methodological refinements and found that compassion reduced accessibility of the public self, but only when preceded by a threat manipulation. These studies’ implications and possible explanations for their apparent inconsistencies in findings are discussed. Taken together, these studies provide partial support for a unique causal link between compassion and reduced cognitive accessibility of the public self.