A Meta-Analysis of Compassion-Based Interventions: Current State of Knowledge and Future Directions
Section snippets
Defining compassion
Definitions of compassion vary, with some defining it as an emotion (Goetz et al., 2010), others as a multidimensional construct (⁎Jazaieri et al., 2013, Strauss et al., 2016), and others as a motivational system (Gilbert, 2014). Goetz and colleagues (2010) specifically define compassion as “the feeling that arises in witnessing another’s suffering and that motivates a subsequent desire to help” (p. 351). This definition emphasizes compassion as an emotion; however, among emotion scientists,
Protocol and registration
The review protocol was prospectively registered in PROSPERO (Kirby, Tellegen, & Steindl, 2015), and our meta-analysis followed the standards of the PRISMA guidelines (Moher, Liberati, Tetzlaff, & Altman, 2009). There was no funding for this meta-analysis.
Eligibility criteria
To be included in the meta-analysis, studies had to meet the following eligibility criteria: (a) the study evaluated an intervention where one of the explicit main objectives of the intervention was to purposively generate compassion or
Study selection
The searches yielded a total of 1,918 papers. After removing duplicates, 1,510 papers remained. After assessing for eligibility, 1,439 studies were excluded as they were not an intervention study (n = 1,236), not in English (n = 12), not an adult population (n = 5), or did not include a compassion-based intervention (n = 186). After screening, 71 full-text articles were assessed for eligibility and 42 were excluded as they were not an RCT (n = 34), did not have full-text available (n = 4), did
Discussion
This is the first meta-analysis to investigate the effects of compassion-based interventions. Overall, meta-analytic techniques were performed on 21 RCT studies (containing data from 1,285 participants), which were conducted over a 12-year period, from different countries around the world (e.g., Canada, Chile, Greece, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Spain, Sweden, and United States). There were significant pre-post intervention moderate effect sizes
Conflict of Interest Statement
The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.
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Asterisk indicate studies included in the meta-analysis.