Meaning and suffering study - dataset

The perception of the suffering of others determines empathy processes and helping behavior. Studies investigating perceptions of the suffering of others have focused on the characteristics of the suffering person and on the relation between the suffering person and the person who perceives the suffering. We examine the effect of the outcomes of the suffering on the perception of the suffering of others. We suggest that people perceive suffering that has a positive outcome as suffering less because the positive outcomes assign meaning to the suffering. We examined our hypothesis in three studies with three different scenarios describing suffering with positive outcomes compared to scenarios of suffering without positive outcomes. Our findings provide support for our hypothesis that suffering with positive outcomes is perceived as less suffering, even when the outcomes don’t actually affect the suffering person or the perceiver. The findings of Study 3 also show that the meaning that people assign to suffering mediates the relation between the positive outcomes of the suffering and the perception of suffering.