Going deeper into compassion through Schwartz’s value theory

Abstract

The role of compassion has attracted increasing interest in the higher educational context due to its recognised benefits. As values influence the cognitive, emotional and behavioural domains, certain values are expected to be closely related to the capacity to experience compassion. This paper empirically examines the relationship between personal values and compassion by focusing on two dimensions or categories of Schwartz’s theory values: self-enhancement and self-transcendence. To this end, we carried out a quantitative analysis of a sample of 252 university students in the last year of their business degree in two public universities, one located in Spain and the other in Finland. Our hypotheses posit the positive relationship of compassion with self-transcendence and the negative relationship of compassion with self-enhancement. Results from regression analysis reveal that, across these two distinct cultural samples, the more people endorse values related to self-transcendence, the more compassionate they are, and the more people endorse values related to self-enhancement, the less compassionate they are. Findings also show no significant difference between the two countries in terms of the relationship between personal values and compassion. Implications of the findings, limitations and future research are examined.