Gender and compassion

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Gender and compassion

• Elsa Almås
• Clinical psychologist
• Associate professor UIA

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Research questions

• What are the origins, conditions and goals for
  empathic and compassionate behaviour between
  people?
• How can these be adapted across borders like
  etnisity, class, gender, age, nation or religion?

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Compassion

• A ready inclination to pity, sympathy or
  tenderness
• Empathic care-giving agency

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Empathy

• The ability to take another persons perspective
• without losing ones own

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What is a human being?
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LeRon Schults

• Most of the great religious traditions take
  compassion to be an ideal for human behavior.

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The bonsai tree
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The physiology of comprehension

• Limitations
• Possibilities

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Versatilitet
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Figure/background
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(No Transcript)
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Gender - and sex
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Origin

• Dependency (helplessness)
• Identification
• Family
• Love
• Likeness
• Variation
• Biology ( macro/micro. Oxytocin)

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Conditions

• Possibility
• Ability (coping)
• Permission
• Confidence
• Belonging

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Goals

• Survival
• Development
• Humanism
• Cultivation
• Culture

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Thank you for your attention!

• elsa.almas_at_uia.no

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Conclusions

• The more different, the less compassion
• The more likeness in difference, the more
  compassion
• Variation is important to take care of different
  needs for compassion
• Love is an important motive for compassion
• Sex and intimacy nourishes the feeling of
  compassion!