Who cares? Religiosity's role in compassionate responses to human suffering.

Abstract

Compassion-defined as care and concern for others' suffering-is a core value in all world religions. Yet, extending compassion is often costly and therefore avoided. Could religiosity be associated with the motivation to amplify compassionate responses? Across three studies (N = 949, collected in 2022-2024) sampling from diverse faiths (Christians, Buddhists), we investigate whether and why religiosity promotes compassionate responses to specific instances of suffering. Leveraging the compassion version of the empathy selection task (Scheffer et al., 2022), compassionate responses were indexed as selecting into compassion-inducing situations and feelings of concern when witnessing suffering among victims of war. We first demonstrate a directional relationship between religiosity and compassionate responding; participating in religious practices increased worshippers' compassionate choices, as shown in a natural experiment during Easter (Study 1). Next, in both a general sample from the United States (Study 2) and generalizing to practicing Christians and Buddhists (Study 3), we found small to moderate positive associations between religiosity and compassionate responding, which were statistically accounted for by perceived psychological closeness to suffering targets. By bridging religion, emotion, and prosociality literatures, this work highlights how religiosity motivates compassionate responses to suffering, advancing theory on motivated compassion and its situational regulation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).