The relationship of dispositional compassion with well-being: a study with a 15-year prospective follow-up

ABSTRACT

We investigated the associations of individual’s compassion for others with his/her affective and cognitive well-being over a long-term follow-up. We used data from the prospective Young Finns Study (N = 1312‒1699) between 1997‒2012. High compassion was related to higher indicators of affective well-being: higher positive affect (B = 0.221, p < .001), lower negative affect (B = −0.358, p < .001), and total score of affective well-being (the relationship of positive versus negative affect) (B = 0.345, p < .001). Moreover, high compassion was associated with higher indicators of cognitive well-being: higher social support (B = 0.194, p < .001), life satisfaction (B = 0.149, p < .001), subjective health (B = 0.094, p < .001), optimism (B = 0.307, p < .001), and total score of cognitive well-being (B = 0.265, p < .001). Longitudinal analyses showed that high compassion predicted higher affective well-being over a 15-year follow-up (B = 0.361, p < .001) and higher social support over a 10-year follow-up (B = 0.230, p < .001). Finally, compassion was more likely to predict well-being (B = [−0.076; 0.090]) than vice versa, even though the predictive relationships were rather modest by magnitude.

KEYWORDS:

• Compassion
• personality
• well-being
• happiness
• longitudinal

Acknowledgments

This study was supported financially by the Academy of Finland (M.H., grant number 308676); the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation (L.P.-R.), and the Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation (L.P.-R.). The Young Finns Study has been financially supported by the Academy of Finland: grants 286284, 134309 (Eye), 126925, 121584, 124282, 129378 (Salve), 117787 (Gendi), and 41071 (Skidi); the Social Insurance Institution of Finland; Competitive State Research Financing of the Expert Responsibility area of Kuopio, Tampere and Turku University Hospitals (grant X51001); Juho Vainio Foundation; Paavo Nurmi Foundation; Finnish Foundation for Cardiovascular Research; Finnish Cultural Foundation; The Sigrid Juselius Foundation; Tampere Tuberculosis Foundation; Emil Aaltonen Foundation; Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation; Signe and Ane Gyllenberg Foundation (T.L); Diabetes Research Foundation of Finnish Diabetes Association; and EU Horizon 2020 (grant 755320 for TAXINOMISIS); and European Research Council (grant 742927 for MULTIEPIGEN project); Tampere University Hospital Supporting Foundation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary Materials

Supplemental data for this article can accessed here.

Role of the funding source

The funding source had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, writing of the report, or in the decision to submit the article for publication.