Getting closer: compassion training increases feelings of closeness toward a disliked person.

ABSTRACT: Evidence-based interventions to favor more harmonious interactions in difficult relationships remain scarce. This study examined whether compassion training may have beneficial effects in an ongoing tense relationship with a disliked person, by reducing schadenfreude toward them and increasing felt interpersonal closeness. 108 participants were assigned to one of three 5-week trainings in a longitudinal randomized controlled study: compassion training, reappraisal training (emotion regulation control condition), or Italian language training (neutral active control condition). The disliked person was not targeted during the trainings to test potential transfer effects. Misfortune scenarios and a measure of interpersonal closeness were used to test whether schadenfreude and closeness feeling

SUBMITTER: Cernadas Curotto P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10603062 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature