Measuring competitive self-focus perspective taking, submissive compassion and compassion goals

Compassionate goals were positively correlated with the empathy quotient and its subscales. However, submissive compassion had a small negative correlation with the social skills subscale on the empathy quotient and was unrelated to other subscales. In addition, submissive compassion, unlike compassionate goals, was associated with submissive behaviour, shame, self-criticism, depression, anxiety and stress. Competitive perspective taking was positively correlated with cognitive empathy on the emotional quotient but not emotional reactivity or social skills.

These findings indicate there are individual differences in compassion motivation and the competencies of compassion, such as empathy and that these should be measured separately. In addition, the findings suggests that the higher peoples cognitive perspective taking, the more they are able to recognise their ability to use empathy for beneficial reasons.