Category Archives: compassionate love

How Doctors Can Be More Compassionate to Patients

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The lack of time, or “time famine,” is the major problem nowadays that deters us from being compassionate to others in our daily encounters. This problem also does not allow doctors to allot sufficient time to interact with patients compassionately in the manner in which they would like to do so. Many doctors regret that they do not have the time to treat patients with compassion, as they would like to.

The problem is specifically intractable in medicine. Healthcare providers in clinics often feel they cannot sufficiently care for their patients the way they would like.

It’s hard to think of something more serious than telling a patient bad medical news. Can medical educators teach physicians how to show real compassion for patients professionally?

How to Show Compassion Professionally

Let’s consider how the researchers from Johns Hopkins University taught cancer doctors the way to support their patient encounters.

Here is a script that doctors can use in their medical practice. Beginning the appointment, the oncologists say:

“I know this is a tough experience to go through and I want you to know that I am here with you. Some of the things that I say to you today may be difficult to understand, so I want you to feel comfortable stopping me if I say something that is confusing or doesn’t make sense. We are here together, and we will go through this together.”

Then, by the end of the appointment, the doctors say:

“I know this is a tough time for you, and I want to emphasize again that we are in this together. I will be with you each step along the way.”

It appeared that when doctors shared these words with their patients, the patients perceived their doctors as warmer, more caring, and more compassionate care providers. These patients experienced less anxiety than other patients.

The study demonstrated not only how compassion matters but how quickly a doctor can display compassion to a patient, even in forty seconds and in 99 words, which eased a patient’s anxiety.

How Much Time Does It Take to Express Compassion?

Other studies have supported this discovery about how little time doctors need to express compassion.

Stephen Trzeciak and his colleagues conducted the study in the Netherlands that showed that it takes only 38 seconds for doctors to express compassion when they deliver bad news to patients to ease the patient’s anxiety.

The study of Rachel Weiss and her colleagues demonstrated that the longer compassionate statements, the better they reduce patient anxiety.

How to Express Compassion in Daily Social Communication

What about other daily situations involving social connections? Can we spare a few seconds to communicate with someone close to us, with our loved one or friend, or with our neighbor, expressing simple words of compassion?

  • Great job today. I know it’s been tough this past week. I see how hard you are working and I’m proud to be working alongside you.
  • I really admire how you are rolling with the punches. I want you to know you’re not in it alone. I’m here, too, and we’ll figure it out together.
How Helping Others Could Make You Feel Less Rushed by Gabriella Kellerman (2023)

Keep in mind that even the brief moments of your time given compassionately to someone else can make a difference in their life as well as in yours.

Give Compassionate Love to Each Other!

We need to rely on each other. We must care about each other. We need compassion for each other to feel good, be good, live well, and do what we are doing well. We need compassionate love for each other to do well in our personal lives.

The modern way of life, with its daily rush and lack of time, presents increasing barriers to personal connections. Nevertheless, we can pursue compassionate social behavior and feel that we have time to spare for it.

How to Reduce “Time Famine” by Connecting with Others

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Nowadays, the “time famine” is one of the greatest obstacles to social connection and expressions of love. We believe we are suffering from a “time famine.” We always have too much to do, never enough time to complete it, and never enough time to love and connect with others.

The perennial struggle for work-life balance frequently boils down to a single issue:

“I simply do not have enough time to excel at both work and home.”

70% of Americans either eat lunch at their desks or skip lunch altogether. Our perception of time constraints prevents us from connecting with others and showing our compassion to them.

Time is the resource that is most precious today. Our minds treat time as a factor determining how to spend time by expressing our love, helping others, and how generous we are willing to be.

However, it’s often not an objective lack of time but rather our subjective perception of a “time famine” that drives this mindset. Unfortunately, we have a natural tendency to overestimate the amount of time we need to help. And therefore, we prefer not to help at all. Therefore, our ability to connect rapidly with others must address and overcome this faulty perception.

How to Overcome a Time Famine

It is normal to be in a hurry, and it is not necessarily bad. Actually, a never-ending “time famine” diminishes our quality of life and causes us to miss paying attention to others who are around us and who need our love and help. important opportunities. 

How can we disrupt this mental script and make compassionate connections with others?

We cannot add more hours to the day, but we can create the mindset that we have time. At least we have it to make interpersonal connections and help others.

American researchers Cassie Mogilner, Zoë Chance, and Michael Norton investigated strategies to reduce the sense of time famine. These strategies are as follows:

  • Giving people time back in their day that had previously been committed to a task
  • Asking people to spend that same amount of time on a task helping others
  • Asking people to waste the time
  • Asking people to spend that time on themselves

“Time Affluence” Instead of “Time Famine”

The authors proposed the term “time affluence” for the mindset when people have the feeling of having time to spare.

“Results of four experiments reveal a counterintuitive solution to the common problem of feeling that one does not have enough time: Give some of it away.”

Mogilner, Chance, & Norton, 2012, p.1233

This study shows that people can increase their subjective sense of time affluence: “Giving Time Gives You Time.” When we do something to help others, even for just 15 or 30 minutes, we feel that we have added time to our day rather than lost time. In comparison, when we help ourselves, we do not feel this way.

How can we adopt this mindset?

It makes sense to challenge yourself and give yourself time to connect with others when you feel time pressure. Please reflect on this experience by noticing the increased sense of time affluence. Fight the “hurry worry.” It is precisely when we feel the least capable of assisting others that we can do the most good by helping others.

Even compassionate “small love” can be valuable to others!

No Time for Love and Compassion? Really?

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We used to talk about big love and true love, yet we frequently forget that situational, compassionate, and caring love is also love, something like “small love” or a small action of love. This kind of love seems to be omnipotent in our lives, but it isn’t. However, it seems that we have no time for love and compassion.

The compassionate and caring thoughts and actions of small love help the well-being of another person. This kind of small love puts the other person’s well-being first, even in small, everyday situations.

“Small love” even means occasional actions of care and help to our neighbor or another person we encounter in everyday situations. “Small love” also means not being a “bystander” when another person is in need.

There Is No Time for Anything, even for Compassion

With life moving faster than ever, we have a lack of time for many things, sometimes even for love.

Nowadays, a lack of time is one of the biggest problems for our interpersonal connections, friendship, and love. We often experience a “time famine” because we often have too much to do and not enough time to do it.

We can’t connect because we don’t have time or because we think we don’t have time.

We strive to prioritize time when deciding what to do—one task or another. We try to select the value of a job, personal life, and relationships. Another dilemma is whether to accomplish a task well or spend time helping others. Hunger, fatigue, and injury are some of the other factors that influence how compassionate we are willing to be, but time is the most valuable resource today.

This is a particularly difficult problem in medicine: healthcare clinics are so understaffed that employees believe they cannot adequately care for even one patient, let alone all of them.

Compassion for a Patient

Modern medical doctors often complain that they do not have the time to interact compassionately with patients. In one study, 56% said that they lack the time to treat patients with compassion.

It’s important to note that our subjective experience of a “time famine” rather than an objective scarcity of time often motivates this mentality. If you want to establish a fast connection, you need to overcome that perception.

Teaching Medical Doctors “Small Love”

Can we teach physicians how to show compassion even with a shortage of time? A study conducted at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health showed that it is possible.

Here is a script that cancer doctors can use to bookend their patient encounters.

“At the start of the appointment, the oncologists say, “I know this is a tough experience to go through and I want you to know that I am here with you. Some of the things that I say to you today may be difficult to understand, so I want you to feel comfortable stopping me if I say something that is confusing or doesn’t make sense. We are here together, and we will go through this together.”

Then, at the end of the appointment, the doctors said: “I know this is a tough time for you, and I want to emphasize again that we are in this together. I will be with you each step along the way.”

Patients whose doctors shared these words with them perceived their doctors as more friendly, compassionate, and caring. Perhaps more importantly, these patients have significantly lower anxiety levels than patients whose doctors did not say these words.

Does Compassion Matter?

The point of this study was not to show that kindness and compassion matter. It was to show how quickly you can show compassion and care for a patient. The average time it took to read the script was only forty seconds. However, each patient felt a lot less anxious after reading just 99 words.

When “Small Love” Is Compassionate

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Compassionate love is a benevolent emotion that involves giving as a way of loving. The compassionate feelings and actions of small love help another person’s well-being. This form of small love emphasizes the well-being of another person, even in occasional daily situations.

Men and women may exhibit compassionate love or the bystander effect in the daily circumstances they encounter. “Small love” means loving the neighbor or another person we occasionally encounter.

When Are People More Willing to Help in an Occasional Interpersonal Encounter?

Let’s look at the experimental situation that researchers set up to explore this question.

“At 10:00 a.m. on December 14, 1970, a sunny day in Princeton, New Jersey, the first batch of volunteers arrived for a psychology experiment. The participants were seminary students at Princeton Theological, studying religion in preparation for a life of spiritual service.”

When the participants arrived at the study, they were informed that the experiment would look into the career paths of seminarians. Researchers gave each participant reading material to help them prepare a short talk on the topic.

They gave half of the participants a sheet of paper with questions and suggestions for making the most of their seminary education. They gave the other half a copy of the well-known New Testament parable of the Good Samaritan, who stops on the side of the road to assist someone in need.

The volunteers who participated in the experiments were unaware that all of this was just a prelude.

Then, the administrator of the experiment told each volunteer that, because there wasn’t enough room, they would have to walk to another building to give their talk. They gave the participants a map that showed how to get from one building to the next. The route went through an alley. One by one, the people took off. When participants walked into the alley, each of them encountered a startling sight:

“a pile of a man, slumped and motionless in a dark doorway, moaning in distress.”

How Helping Others Could Make You Feel Less Rushed

The Critical Moment of the Experimental Situation to Show Small Love

Here was the critical moment of the experiment: “Who would stop to help, like the Good Samaritan, and who would pass him by?”

“The groaning man, a disguised member of the research team, noted the reactions of each seminarian. Some hurried past without noticing him. Others looked or nodded but didn’t stop. Some paused briefly to ask if the man was all right. And then there were a few “superhelpers” who guided the suffering man inside, refusing to leave until care had arrived.”

How Helping Others Could Make You Feel Less Rushed

Who slowed down? Who was in a hurry? What made a person decide whether or not to help another person in need?

Researchers John Darley and C. Daniel Batson expected that priming the students’ minds to think about the Good Samaritan would make them more likely to help a person in need. The intention was to demonstrate scripture’s power to inspire moral behavior by showing “small love” to a stranger.

What the Results of the Study Revealed

However, the results of the study did not support the expected effect:

“Students who hadn’t read the parable helped (or neglected to help) in similar numbers to those that had. None of the other variables Darley and Batson tested—such as what type of religious beliefs the participants held—made a difference, either.”

How Helping Others Could Make You Feel Less Rushed

The only factor that affected the willingness to help was the time pressure.

“Students who were told to hurry to their destination were significantly less likely to stop to help a man in pain. Students who were told they had a bit of spare time to make the walk stopped more frequently and offered more substantial forms of help.”

Darley, J. M., & Batson, C. D. (1973). ” From Jerusalem to Jericho”: A study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behavior

Surprisingly, seminary students who devote their lives to serving others are less likely to help someone in obvious need if they are short on time.

The feeling that we lack time to help others can be deceptive. And, actually, we can extend our time by connecting with others.

Can Sharing Bad News Improve Close Relationships?

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Men and women in close relationships hope to experience joyful and optimistic times together. They are happy to share everything good that happens in their lives. The people close to them are happy to hear the good news. It is widely held that sharing in a relationship—telling another about one’s emotional experiences—makes people feel better.

What about bad news? Does it make sense to share with others in their close relationships something bad that happened to us? Some may want to avoid spoiling their good moods.

Does it help people themselves when they share with others their bad news? People often feel worse after discussing negative events that have occurred to them. They perhaps replay the negative experience in their minds.

Something even worse may occur. Social sharing tends to lower the mood of the person listening to the disclosure. But why is social sharing so popular if it has emotional costs for both sharers and listeners? In their recent article at Character & Context Blog, German scholars Antje Rauers and Michaela Riediger from the University of Jena discuss this controversy.

People Tend to Share their Bad News with those Close to Them

For decades, scientists have tried to answer this question. Studies of intimate relationships provide a possible clue. Research shows that sharing stories about feelings can bring people closer together. As a result, perhaps the positive effects of sharing are not related to mood but rather to the quality of the relationships between people. Perhaps in times of crisis, the act of telling one another bad news strengthens our bonds with one another.

People usually share meaningful experiences with close friends or family members. To explore how and why they do this, Antje Rauers and Michaela Riediger designed a study with the goal of capturing social sharing as it happens in real life. Researchers asked 100 romantic couples over cell phones about their experiences as they went about their daily lives. During a period of three weeks, both partners recorded their current mood and how close they felt to their partner six times per day. Every time, partners also documented if they had any problems and whether they had shared with their partner their experience. Researchers were particularly interested in situations in which people had indeed just experienced a hassle. Then, they compared how people felt if they told their partner about these incidents with how they felt if they kept that bad experience to themselves.

What Did Researchers Find in Their Study?

Unsurprisingly, people felt worse following adversity than they did in the absence of such events.

Yet, researchers wanted to know if social sharing helped people emotionally recover from the hassles. Perhaps not necessarily. Some did not feel better after sharing, while some did. Some men and women also felt worse after hearing their partner’s story, whereas others did not. In other words, social sharing resulted in both emotional gains and losses for the couples.

Their sharing, however, significantly increased their relationship’s closeness. Both men and women experienced these benefits. And both the sharers and the receivers experienced these benefits. Researchers also examined how people in close relationships felt prior to sharing.

The main conclusion was that sharing did make people feel closer, no matter how close they had felt before. 

Social Sharing Affects Future Closeness in Relationships

Here is another question of interest. Are they fleeting experiences, or do they accumulate over time to increase closeness? How long do these increases in relationship closeness last?

According to the theory, social sharing generates virtuous cycles of mutual trust and even more sharing, which increase relationship closeness over time. Researchers asked the couples about their relationships 2.5 years later.

Results showed that those who had frequently shared their problems with their partners reported greater relationship closeness 2.5 years later. People who rarely shared with their partners, on the other hand, lost some of their closeness over time. Thus, the author’s findings suggest that social sharing can help to strengthen relationships both in the present and in the future. This psychological discovery explains why, despite the emotional costs, social sharing is so popular. Sharing bad news may not necessarily help to improve our mood, but it can aid in the formation of our close bonds.

Loving Kindness and Benevolence

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Loving kindness and benevolence are the greatest needs that people have to live healthy and happily. Love finds expression in acts of kindness, and acts of kindness foster the growth of love. In recent years, the concept of “loving kindness” has become very popular among researchers and practitioners in cultural studies, psychology, and mental health. Its popularity came from the original Buddhist philosophy and culture.

The Buddhist Culture of Love

The Sanskrit word “maitrī” is usually translated into English as loving-kindness, benevolence, good will, and active interest in others.

In Buddhist cultural teaching, loving kindness is the mental state of unselfish and unconditional kindness to all beings and to each one.

The Buddhist philosophies, the ancient religions of Hinduism and Jainism, teach people to cultivate universal loving-kindness, benevolence, and compassion in their minds.

In some regards, this Buddhist teaching of loving-kindness resembles the Christian teaching of agape, as altruistic love for others, , as well as the ancient Chinese culture of altruistic love.

Kindly and Benevolently Love Another as Yourself

Loving kindness lets us stay connected. It has the power to eliminate barriers between us and others.

The core concept of Buddhist teaching—”anatta”—denies the existence of a separate self. As Zen Master Dogen (1976) put it:

“To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things. To be enlightened by all things is to remove the barriers between oneself and others.”

Zen Master Dogen (1976).

This means that “self” does not exist within individual existence in the sense of a permanent autonomous being. As the Dalai Lama noted,

What we think of as our self, our personality and ego, are temporary creations, if not delusions.

(Dalai Lama, 2007).

Loving Kindness Can Be Contagious

Why is being kind so important? Kindness is an expression of love and a way that love grows.

Keep in mind that loving kindness can be contagious. Practicing loving kindness every day in relationships with others can breed loving kindness in others. When people see or receive expressions and acts of love and kindness, they tend to repay or transfer such loving kindness to others. Daily and random acts of kindness can increase feelings of happiness, optimism, and confidence in those who love and those who are loved. They may also inspire others to replicate the kind and benevolent actions they have witnessed. Therefore, these expressions and acts of loving kindness can contribute to a more positive community. The kindness of love has the potential to make the world a better place.

11 Simple Ways to Be Loving, Kind, and Benevolent in Daily Life

There are several ways to practice loving kindness in everyday life. Among those are these simple ethical rules:

  • Kindness puts others at the center.
  • Pay attention to others.
  • Be there to listen.
  • Smile at others.
  • Show them that you care for them.
  • Offer a hand to help.
  • Stay connected.
  • Pay attention to what you give rather than what you receive.
  • Compliment others rather than expect compliments.
  • Expect good things to happen. Be a positive light.

Following these ways is so simple but so beneficial for others as well as for you. Loving kindness brings wellbeing for all.

Be kind, benevolent, and kindly loving and the world will be a better place to live for you and for them.

The Benevolence of True Love: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

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The feelings, thoughts, and acts of doing good for the one you love are a feature central to the concept of love across many different cultures and historic eras of humankind. According to many studies, the benevolence of love might be a more important feeling and act for various kinds of love than the experience of passion, intimacy, commitment, and attachment.

Love Is Benevolence

Benevolence and altruism are commonly driven by a desire to help others. Most likely, kindness is the highest form of love. It is the desire to do something good for someone else, including the beloved, loved ones, and anyone else who deserves it.

Are Humans Benevolent by Nature?

Humans, according to some philosophers, scientists, and theologians, are an altruistic species by nature.However, they suggest the importance of differentiating the concepts of “benevolence” and “altruism.” They also advise that the meaning of each of these concepts varies depending on the social conditions of living (Jencks, 1990; Nunney, 2000).

Scholars illustrate how the human experiences of benevolence and altruism evolve in certain social and cultural contexts. (e.g., Flescher & Worthen, 2007; Jellal & Wolff, 2002; Nunney, 2000; Sober & Wilson, 1998).

The findings of historical and cultural investigations are generally in accord with this assertion of the nearly universal nature of benevolence and altruism (see for review, Karandashev, 2017, 2019). Nevertheless, we should acknowledge that many cases of the adversity, selfishness, and aggression that people have experienced and exhibited in the past may contradict such a declaration.

Cross-cultural Universality of Benevolent Love

The anthropological and linguistic studies of love have explored the universality of the idea of benevolent love. These studies have revealed that cultural views on and understanding of love can vary significantly in many societies. This evidence makes it challenging to compare the love lexicon across cultures and languages (see for review, Karandashev, 2017, 2019).

For example, some societies do not have the word “love” in their vocabulary. Some researchers in linguistics believe that the word “love” is too abstract to denote the reality of human life. Many researchers may agree with this statement. Love exists in human life in various kinds and types of love, like kinship love, maternal love, romantic love, marital love, and others. Love exists in people’s lives in various feelings, emotions, attitudes, traits, and values. All these varieties of loving ideas, experiences, expressions, and actions have their own words.

According to cultural anthropologists and psycholinguists, the corresponding words have only recently evolved in some languages and societies. For centuries, many other, more specific, words denoted specific aspects of human experiences associated with the modern abstract notion of love. This is why, in various cultural contexts, people have had other words that express particular experiences, expressions, and acts of love. Because there are so many different ways to talk about love, it is hard to find words that mean the same thing in different languages (see Karandashev, 2017; 2019; 2022a). 

A Simple and Universal Linguistic Formula of Love

Nevertheless, some language researchers, like Anna Wierzbicka, have been persistent in their search for basic linguistic universals of love. Anna Wierzbicka has demonstrated that love lexicons substantially vary and can denote different things in different cultures and languages. Nevertheless, all cultures and languages are capable of communicating the ultimate meaning of love. This meaning of love is the same in all cultures, and it can be expressed in a simple formula:

“Person X does good things for person Y.”

(Wierzbicka, 1999).

So, it seems that the key cross-culturally universal meaning of love is the experience, expression, and action of giving and doing something good for another person. This is why true love is benevolent love.

The Universality of Benevolent Love Across Cultures

Benevolent love has been an enduring cultural concept for centuries.

The ancient Greek word “agape” meant benevolent, altruistic love for everyone, including family members and people you don’t know.

The comparable Latin word of the ancient Romans for this kind of benevolent love for all was “caritas.”

Christian teachings elevated benevolent love as “agape,” defining it as universal, selfless, and all-giving love to others. Agape love is completely selfless and gives without expecting anything in return.

The ancient Chinese word “ren” meant benevolent love for others. The word conveys the same benevolent meaning even though it has a specific meaning inspired by Confucian teachings that originated in ancient Chinese civilizations of past centuries.

The cross-cultural concept of benevolent love for all and everyone is present far beyond Western and Eastern cultures, far beyond Christian and Confucian religious traditions. This type of benevolent love has its own lexicon in many languages (Lomas, 2008). Here are some examples.

The Indian Sanskrit word “maitrī“means benevolence and loving-kindness.

The word “metta” is a culturally traditional Buddhist concept for lovingkindness.

The Yiddish word “gemilut hasadim”  describes the concept of loving kindness in Jewish culture.

In the Inuit language of indigenous peoples of the Arctic regions, the word “pittiarniq” expresses the meaning of benevolent love.

The Nguni Bantu word “ubuntu” of many African cultures also bears the meaning of benevolent love for all others, for humanity overall.

The Pashto language of Persian origins has the word “melmastyā́,” which essentially conveys the meaning of welcoming love for others, whether they are members of one’s own tribe or strangers. I could provide many other cultural and linguistic examples that show the benevolent nature of love (Karandashev, 2022a).

What Is Altruism? A Cross-Cultural Perspective

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To put it briefly, altruism is feeling empathy and caring about others’ well-being despite our own interests, without expecting anything in return. In true love, lovers are altruistic: they passionately strive to do anything good for their beloved, even sacrificing themselves.

Altruism: What Is It?

Altruism is the ethical belief and practice of caring about the well-being of other people or another individual regardless of our personal interests. In other words, it is the ability to care about another’s well-being without wanting anything in return. It’s important that altruistic actions are ones that people intentionally choose to do because they want to help and benefit another person.

Altruistic lovers behave by being motivated by a desire to benefit the beloved for the sake of that person. In some cases, altruism requires doing something to help someone else, even scarifying yourself in one or another way, to one or another extent.

People commonly use the term altruism as an antonym for “self-interested,” “selfish,” or “egoistic” thinking, feelings, and behaving.

What Do Altruistic People Have in Return?

We shall, however, admit that acts of altruism and kindness are probably not completely selfless. Altruistic people still receive psychological rewards for these actions through hedonistic motivation of internal and intrinsic emotions. For example, American psychologists Robert Cialdini and Douglas Kenrick (1976) did a study that proved the hedonistic view of altruism to be true. Some people find it emotionally rewarding and self-gratifying to do good things for others. Their socialization experiences likely had an impact on their altruistic psychological traits, emotions, motivation, and behavior.

Recent studies have shown the power of love and benevolence and demonstrated how altruistic love brings good not only to others but also to those who do good things.

The Multifaceted Concept of Altruism

Throughout centuries, scholars studying altruism and altruistic love have been prolific in their research (Karandashev, 2022a).  Thanks, now we know much more about this topic than ever before.

Altruism is a complex cultural idea that includes values, traits, attitudes, moods, and emotions. In this regard, altruism is multilayered. The psychology of altruistic love consists of (1) the desire to help others, (2) the action tendency to do things for their own good, and (3) the act of helping others. Altruistic psychology also involves altruistic thinking and feelings.

The Nearly Cross-Cultural Universality of Altruism and Altruistic Love

The moral virtue of altruism has been around for a long time in many cultures across religious and nonreligious contexts. Many religious worldviews preach the high value of altruism as their central tenet. I presented the Western Christian and Eastern Confucian religious teaching of altruism elsewhere.

Scholars and educated people in both the West and the East know a lot about altruism and altruistic love. What about other cultural contexts? Many other cultures around the world have had a long history of contemplating and writing about selfless, altruistic love (Karandashev, 2022a). Scholars can trace these selfless tenets of love back to the earliest periods of the cultural ethics of the world’s major religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Taoism. The scholars of many countries have widely discussed the concept of altruism and altruistic love in nonreligious contexts (Karandashev, 2022a).

How Altruistic Are Chinese Attitudes in Love Relationships?

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The concepts of altruism and altruistic love are well known to Western and Eastern scholars and the educated public. Ideas of selfless, altruistic love can be traced back to ancient times in many cultures of the world, specifically in Western and Eastern civilizations. These altruistic ideas were among the earliest in the cultural ethics of Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Islam (see for review, Karandashev, 2022a).

It is apparent that the Christian teaching of agape love, which I presented elsewhere, is similar and comparable to the Confucian concept of altruistic love, presented in another article. Yet, they have some important differences.

What Is the Legacy of Confucian Teachings of Altruistic Love in Modern Asia?

The religious and philosophical teachings of Confucius (trad. 551–479 BCE) have served as the cultural basis for many Chinese values, ethics, and social and moral philosophy. Altruism was a central tenet of Confucian ethics, and his ethical teachings placed a considerable emphasis on concepts such as loving kindness and selfless love. As he once said,

“Do not do to others what you would not like to do to yourself.”

The Chinese word “ren” expresses one of the most significant cultural meanings of love. Confucius defined “ren” as the common Chinese word for “love,” “ai.” In many lexical contexts, it is translated more specifically as benevolent love, kindness, compassion, and altruism.

Different from the Christian concept of agape love, the Confucian concept of ren love reflected the Chinese hierarchical social structure of group relationships.

Selfless Giving in the Modern Understanding of Altruistic Love in China

In modern Chinese society and scholarship, the altruistic nature of love is expressed in selfless giving. In this regard, the Chinese understanding of altruistic love resembles the traditional Christian concept of agape love as being unselfish and undemanding. Both concepts include giving without expecting anything in return as one of their central emotions and actions (Chen & Li, 2007).

Sacrifices in the Modern Understanding of Altruistic Love in China

According to the traditional ideology of Confucianism, the commitment of an individual to the affectionate relationship of marital love implies sacrifices. It is applicable first to such a close relationship as the family.

In modern Chinese culture, people tend to exhibit the capacity and disposition to put their families’ harmony, cohesion, and prosperity ahead of their own personal interests, goals, and well-being. This is a cultural Chinese trait that goes back centuries.

For instance, Wang (1999) considered self-sacrifice and devotion as the primary components of family commitment. His research has shed light on the role of self-sacrifice in the Taiwanese culture of interpersonal relationships. The author provided convincing evidence supporting the high value of sacrifice in Taiwanese marriages. He revealed that even in today’s Taiwanese society, cultural norms anticipate that spouses will make sacrifices for one another. Results of the study showed that in most cases of marital relationships, partners are willing to sacrifice something if it helps improve the quality of their relationship or the health of their partner.

The Impact of Chinese Collectivism on People’s Willingness to Sacrifice in Marital Relationships

Depending on its individualistic and collectivistic values, a culture can affect a spouse’s willingness to make sacrifices within a marriage. The degree to which a culture places an emphasis on collectivism as opposed to individualism can have a direct impact on how men and women are willing to make sacrifices for one another in marriage.

In a collectivist Chinese society, societal beliefs can interfere with the individual rights of a spouse, such as a woman’s right to equality. This is why gender inequality is culturally acceptable. For men and women, such marital customs are acceptable for the sake of interdependence and relationship harmony. On the other hand, people from a culture that emphasizes individualism view such gender inequality as unacceptable. Their cultural beliefs about individual rights and independence may conflict with the potential need for self-sacrifice that marriage may necessitate. So, due to high values of autonomy and personal independence, it is challenging for men and women in individualistic cultures to maintain a balance between personal and family needs.

How Altruistic Are Western Attitudes in Love Relationships?

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The Christian ideals of agape, which have been prevalent in Western cultures, placed a greater emphasis on the value of altruistic agape love as opposed to passionate Eros love.

Passionate Versus Altruistic Love

On the one hand, the experience of passionate Eros love makes a lover more likely to be egocentric, possessive, and sexually obsessive.

On the other hand, when a lover experiences altruistic Agape love, he or she is more likely be unselfish, act benevolently, to give freely, and be willing to sacrifice for others (Nygren 1989).

Throughout the centuries, one and another kind of these cultural values have competed with one other in the minds of romantic lovers inspiring various love story plots. The most romantic stories, however, inspired lovers to put the interests of the beloved first, above their own, prioritizing altruism over passionate possessiveness.

What Does It Mean to Love Altruistically?

Individuals with predominant altruistic love in heterosexual relationships perceive the beloved as an idealized, unique individual. Their passion is to make their loved one happy. Their love is capable of overcoming selfishness in a relationship centered on the well-being of a partner.

Such altruistic lovers are willing to give up a lot of things in their life for the sake of the person they love and care about.  The well-being of their beloved is the most important thing in the world to them. For the sake and life of a beloved, they are willing to endure inconvenience, discomfort, suffering, and pain, and if necessary, even death. This altruistic love, known as agape, is very romantic. It may look not less romantic than passionate love (for example, Ben-Zev & Goussinsky, 2008).

Their selfless attitudes prioritize the well-being of the beloved. Their altruistic attitudes go beyond their self. Reciprocation is not important: they do not expect anything in return. they are willing to give the beloved rather than receive from him/her.

Giving for them is a joy of love. They give everything they have and themselves without considering the material or psychological cost of what they do. As Erich Fromm (1956) once beautifully noted,

“Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous. Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.” 

(Fromm, (956/2006, p.21).