Empathy and Compassion Across Cultures and the Implications for Conflict Resolution

Empathy and emotions are relatively new avenues for exploration in international relations. While it is recognized that the meaning and expression of emotion is culturally based, there has been little exploration of cross-cultural differences in the meaning of specific emotions as they relate to cross-cultural interactions. Gaining a clear understanding of what empathy means, how it is distinguished from compassion, and how it is expressed would seem to be an important task in the context of conflict resolution. Religious systems of thought offer an important source of emotional meaning and the purpose of this paper is to explore the meaning of empathy and compassion in key texts of Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity, focusing in particular on the thought of Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, and Martin Luther King, in order to identify and contrast the meaning of these empathy-based interactions and explore the implications for its role in conflict.