Abstract
Objectives
Compassion science has been informed and guided by Buddhist perspectives, but has yet to fully account for certain key Buddhist ideas about compassion. Skillful means and fierce compassion represent two such ideas, both of which pertain to compassionate actions that may not always appear compassionate to recipients or observers.
Methods
To better account for the variety of compassionate behavior evident in the Buddhist traditions, including but not limited to skillful means and fierce compassion, this paper reviews relevant theory and findings from compassion science through the lens of the Big Two Framework. The Big Two Framework distinguishes between two core dimensions of social cognition, namely communion (i.e., warmth, morality, and expressiveness) and agency (i.e., dominance, competence, and instrumentality).
Results
The Big Two Framework’s fundamental distinction between communion and agency appears useful for delineating forms of compassionate behavior. Additionally, the framework is helpful for considering behavior from actor versus recipient/observer perspectives, making it well-suited to account for compassionate actions that may not appear compassionate.
Conclusions
Reflecting on compassion in relation to the Big Two maps a richer understanding of the social cognition underlying diverse forms of compassionate behavior and offers an empirically tractable framework and terminology for advancing research on understudied expressions of compassion.