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Article published In:
Scientific Study of Literature
Vol. 9:2 (2019) ► pp.107–162

Compassion-Cultivating Pedagogy

Advancing social justice by improving social cognition through literary study

| Kent State University
| Kent State University
| Kent State University
| Kent State University
| Kent State University
| Kent State University
| Kent State University
| Kent State University
| Kent State University
Previous studies suggest that narrative fiction promotes social justice by increasing empathy, but critics have argued that the partiality of empathy severely limits its effectiveness as an engine of social justice, and that what needs to be developed is universal compassion rather than empathy. We created Compassion-Cultivating Pedagogy (CCP) to target the development of two social-cognition capabilities that entail compassion: (1) recognition of self-other overlap and (2) cognizance of the situational, uncontrollable causes of bad character, bad behavior, and bad life-outcomes. Employing a pre/post within- and between-subjects design, we found that students in the CCP classes, but not students in conventionally taught classes, improved in these two areas of social cognition and also exhibited increased preference for compassionate social policies for stigmatized groups. This finding suggests that pedagogy can play a significant role in literature’s contribution to social justice, and that further efforts to develop and test pedagogies for improving social cognition are warranted.
Keywords: social cognition, social justice, compassion, empathy, literature, pedagogy
Article outline
  • Theoretical and empirical background
    • Problems with the empathy-altruism hypothesis
    • Cognitive determinants of compassion
    • How narrative fiction might cultivate compassion
  • Study #1
    • Hypotheses
  • Method
    • Compassion-Cultivating Pedagogy (CCP)
    • Non-treatment classes
    • Measures
      • Moral luck
      • Universal human solidarity
      • Compassionate versus retributive social action
  • Study #1 results
    • Changes in external, situational attributions
      • External attributions for poverty
      • External attributions for crime
      • External attributions for negative character traits
      • External attributions for other behaviors and life outcomes
    • Changes in internal, dispositional attributions
      • Internal attributions for poverty
      • Internal attributions for crime
      • Internal attributions for negative character traits
      • Internal attributions for other behaviors and life outcomes
    • Changes in recognition of solidarity with others
      • Universalist orientation
      • Similarity
    • Changes in responses to vignettes of negative characters, actions, and life outcomes
      • Change toward more compassionate social treatment of stigmatized people
      • Changes in attribution for murder
      • Attribution of Robert’s action to present circumstances
      • Attribution of Robert’s action to genetic endowment
      • Attribution of Robert’s action to formative environment
    • Correlations
      • Correlations between changes in attribution and compassion
      • Correlations between changes in perceived overlap and compassion
      • Correlations between changes in vignette responses
  • Discussion of study #1 results
    • Changes in recognition of moral luck (external and internal attributions)
    • Changes in perceived solidarity (similarity and universalist orientation scales)
    • Changes in recommended social policies: The vignettes
    • Limitations of study #1
  • Study #2
  • Method
    • Measures
    • Participants
  • Study #2 results
    • Moral luck/blame mitigation
    • Perceived self-other overlap/solidarity
    • Sympathy
    • Social policies
    • Analysis of individual classes
    • Path analyses
    • Discussion of study #2
    • Limitations of study #2
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 30 June 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.19007.bra
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