Compassionate Love: Concluding Reflections

Growing old together

“…Our confidence in these results is enhanced by a number of strengths in our study design. First, addressing what some have considered to be a critical gap in the compassionate love literature (Perlman & Aragon, 2009), we utilized a dyadic approach to understand the potential benefits of both giving and receiving compassionate love. By including both spouses, we were able to find complex associations not only between the provision and receipt of compassionate love and health but also the extent to which these links differed based on who was reporting on the compassionate love and whose health was in question.…”

“…Further, given the social expectation to be compassionate toward one’s spouse, social desirability may also play a role in reporting positive relationship interactions (see Eisenberg et al, 1989). Therefore, to address current criticisms of the compassionate love field (Oman, 2011; Perlman & Aragon, 2009), the current study uses both self-reported data and observer-coded degree of compassionate love as described by the spouse, referred to here as spouse-reported compassionate love, to capture not only one’s own feelings of compassionate love but the partner’s experience of that compassionate love as well. Utilizing this multi-reporter approach to studying compassionate love thus builds upon and extends the current literature by providing a clearer, more comprehensive picture about the nature of compassionate love in marriage and its benefits for health in older adulthood.…”

“…In the current study, the actor effects capture the links between one’s own compassionate love (both self-reported and spouse reported) and one’s health, thus building upon the existing literature documenting the benefits of compassionate love (Sprecher & Fehr, 2006; Underwood, 2009). Addressing a notable gap in the literature (Perlman & Aragon, 2009), we also examined partner effects to capture the links between having a compassionate partner (again determined through both self-report and spouse report) and an individual’s health. Having a spouse be more oriented to one’s well-being should translate into not only feeling better about one’s health but also reporting fewer health problems.…”

Does passage meditation foster compassionate love among health professionals?: a randomised trial

“…Together with our growing understanding of substrate factors and dynamics , these EPP-derived strategies can potentially inform compassionate love interventions at the level of the individual, organisation, or community Oman et al, 2009). More broadly, spiritual modelling theory -derived, as it is, from Bandura's (1986) social cognitive theory -offers a response to Perlman and Arago´n's (2008) call to examine ''other theoretical perspectives . .…”

“…Overall, recent work on compassionate love has been summarised in a volume edited by . This volume provides considerable evidence in support of Underwood's (2002Underwood's ( , 2008 theoretical framework linking compassionate love to various outcomes, and to substrate, discernment, and motivational factors (Perlman & Arago´n, 2008). Compassionate love research has also been informed by decades of research on closely aligned constructs, such as compassion, gratitude, and forgiveness (Lopez & Snyder, 2003;Park, Peterson, & Seligman, 2004;Sorokin, 1954Sorokin, /2002.…”