Why "I've Been There" Can Make You Less Compassionate

You turn to someone who has overcome the same difficulty, expecting them to understand. Why can they sometimes become your toughest critic? From an icy polar plunge to judgments about a tiring task, this video explores how remembering a struggle can differ from feeling it, how personal success can become a standard for judging others, and when shared experience produces a more favorable response. In this video: The friend who remembers the struggle but now sees it from the other side A polar-plunge study of compassion and contempt Remembering an experience versus reliving its emotional force The hot-cold empathy gap Judgments made while fatigued and a week after a tiring task Why the way someone copes can change an observer's response How experience can help us ask better questions Chapters: 0:00 The Person Who Understands 0:52 Out of the Water 1:38 Remembering Isn't Reliving 2:29 The Week After 3:45 When the Judgment Reverses 4:42 What Experience Can Give Us 5:48 Back at the Table Sources & further reading: Ruttan, R. L., McDonnell, M.-H., & Nordgren, L. F. (2015). Having "been there" doesn't mean I care: When prior experience reduces compassion for emotional distress. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(4), 610–622. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000012 Author manuscript: https://repository.upenn.edu/bitstrea... Nordgren, L. F., van der Pligt, J., & van Harreveld, F. (2006). Visceral drives in retrospect: Explanations about the inaccessible past. Psychological Science, 17(7), 635–640. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2... Lim, D., & DeSteno, D. (2016). Suffering and compassion: The links among adverse life experiences, empathy, compassion, and prosocial behavior. Emotion, 16(2), 175–182. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000144 #Psychology #Empathy #Compassion #HumanBehavior