Compassion: From Neuroscience to New Horizons and Innovative, Inclusive Research Agendas

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Background

The nature and science of compassion encompasses many aspects of human behavior, social and organizational experience, with resultant debate about its definition, meaning and application. Research, theorizing and scholarship is spread across a wide range of methodological, disciplinary, historical, and cultural perspectives including psychology, sociology, psychosocial studies, organizational science, inter/national politics, and evolutionary studies. Global concerns relating to the climate crisis, COVID-19 pandemic, and mass movements of displaced people all point to an urgent need for compassion in all human interactions. New and innovative interdisciplinary approaches, agendas, and paradigms are needed to both compliment, and critique, existing understandings of the meaning and applications of compassion in all its diverse and complex forms.

In a world where there appears to be increasing demand for simplification and quantification from governments and policy makers, questions must be asked about what this means for psychology and social science research. The tendency towards post/positivist reductionism has led to critiques that universities have become factories that produce sterile, derivative, unimaginative writing. 21st-century universities have been described as ‘anxiety machines’, lacking in compassion, and creating more competition and stress than knowledge. Arguably, research into compassion should take place in compassionate disciplinary and institutional cultures. We all have a role to play in addressing the lack of compassion in universities, which will involve an institutional level shift from individual-level competition to group-level collaboration. Importantly, recent advances in compassion research promise gains in understanding in both the science and neuroscience of human experience, and in applications of that work to improve humankind and the world around us. Qualitative research in psychology and psychosocial approaches, although becoming more visible, still remain a minority endeavor within the discipline. This Research Topic offers the opportunity to foreground the values and virtues of qualitative psychology, alongside more tried and tested approaches.

This Research Topic issue aims primarily to address the grand vision of Frontiers: A world where all people have an equal opportunity to seek, share and create knowledge. We therefore particularly welcome contributions from: (i) early career researchers; (ii) academics from minority/under-represented groups; and (iii) research from diverse contexts that includes less heard voices, and/or draws upon experience of participants and communities beyond ‘White, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic’ (WEIRD) regions and cultures. We are interested in the following types of manuscripts: Original Research using qualitative/post-qualitative, arts-based, mixed-methods, or quantitative methods; Systematic Review; Methods; Review; Mini Review; Perspective; Conceptual Analysis; Brief Research Report; and Opinion articles. Themes include (but are not restricted to):
• Compassion and mental health, including climate anxiety
• Compassion and mindfulness
• Compassion and health, including self-compassion and wellbeing
• Compassion, organization and work
• Compassion in education systems, including schools and universities
• Compassion and global environmental politics

Keywords: Compassion, Neuroscience, Organizational Psychology, Climate Psychology, Qualitative Research, Psychosocial Research

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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