Compassionate Responses in the US and Germany

American
compassionate responses (i.e., sending sympathy cards) focus more on the
positive (e.g., comforting memories) and less on the negative (e.g., the pain
of someone’s death) than German compassionate responses, partly because of
cultural differences in how much people want to avoid feeling negative
(“avoided negative affect”; ANA). However, are these culture-specific compassionate
responses actually considered more comforting and compassionate within their
respective cultural context? We predicted that Americans would find responses that
focus on the negative less and those that focus on the positive more comforting
and compassionate than Germans do and that ANA would mediate these differences.
In Study 1, 152 Americans and 315 Germans reported their ANA and rated how comforting
they considered receiving different sympathy cards. As predicted, Americans
found sympathy cards that contained negative content less and cards that
contained positive content more comforting than Germans did. In Studies 2a and
2b, to examine whether these culture-specific conceptualizations of a comforting
response would generalize to how people conceptualize a compassionate face, 118
Americans and 80 Germans selected stimuli that most resembled a compassionate
(or happy) face using a reverse correlation task. As predicted, people’s mental
representation of a compassionate face contained
more happiness/less sadness in an American than German context. In both studies, ANA partially mediated the cultural
differences. This research demonstrates that responses that are intended to be
compassionate might not be considered equally compassionate and comforting across
cultures, which has implications for relief efforts, which are often organized
internationally.