If genes influence how likely a person is to feel compassion, how strongly a person tends to feel compassion, or towards whom a person tends to feel compassion, then compassion is basically immutable and inherently self-serving.

Early life experiences influence a person’s tendency to experience and act upon feelings of compassion.

What can we conclude about the heritability of compassion from twin and family studies of sociability?

Which is a key approach to studying how specific genotypes might contribute to compassion?

Gene variants have been shown to support mental processes that contribute to compassion on several levels: Individual disposition, interpersonal (e.g. in the context of dyadic relationships), and at the wider network, or community level. Which level of sociability assessment have OT variants been shown to most strongly influence?

How is the strength of the influence of the Vagus Nerve on the body typically measured?

According to Steve Porges’s Polyvagal theory, the Vagus Nerve’s multifaceted influence on the body orients people to:

Studies suggest that higher Vagal Tone:

Studies show that participating in programs for increasing compassion strengthens Vagal Tone.

The ______ ________ refers to the idea that one can exercise and practice prosocial states like compassion and affection to strengthen Vagal Tone, which equips and motivates people to invest more in positive and prosocial interactions, which further strengthens Vagal Tone and boosts overall well-being, and so on.

According to early studies of Oxytocin in two subspecies of voles, its key function was to support:

Better eye contact and accuracy in identifying emotional expressions, as well as increased trust and social appeal have all been associated with increased:

Oxytocin can make it easier for people to experience compassion by:

According to the ____________, Oxytocin’s role is less about making us feel warm and fuzzy towards other people, and more about directing our attention to what is most important about other people.

The effects of Oxytocin on feelings of compassion are mediated by individual, contextual, and ___________ factors, such as whether or not another person is perceived to be part of one’s own in-group.

There is one specific structure in the brain that controls whether or not a person experiences compassion.

One of the key components of compassion is to completely mirror, or take on the same emotional experience that the other suffering person is having, so that you feel the same way that they do.

Training in compassion has been shown to increase prefrontal upregulation of the dopamine pathway responses during compassion, which suggests that compassion training:

Research on the neuroscience of parenting suggests that engaging caregiving circuits, which are repurposed to support all kinds of social bonds and interactions throughout life, is tied to a cascade of physiological processes that benefit health and well-being.

Two ways that we interpret the feelings that arise, or empathy that occurs when we encounter another’s pain and suffering that are key to experiencing compassion are: