Study finds empathy links self-compassion to lower preference for social dominance
Mar 5th 2026
A Mindfulness study used network analysis on college student data to show that higher self-compassion relates to greater empathy, which in turn associates with reduced support for social inequality, though causality and generalizability remain untested.
- Researchers analyzed survey data from 979 US undergraduates collected before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Psychometric network analysis showed empathy acts as a bridge connecting self-compassion to lower social dominance orientation.
- The emotional component of empathy, empathic concern, had a stronger negative link to social dominance than perspective-taking.
- The network structure remained stable across pre-pandemic and pandemic samples, suggesting robustness under social stress.
- The study is correlational and drawn from a single university sample, so it cannot prove causation or broad generalizability.