Areas › Anger › Growing empathy
Arranging your face into a caring expression does not reliably produce the caring. Do not expect the feeling to turn up just because you set the mouth.
The idea that holding a smile makes you happier has had a rough time whenever researchers try to repeat it, so it is not something to promise anybody. Copying another person's posture and pace looks more useful for how close you feel than copying their face is for what you feel. Use the body, keep your expectations small, and let the feeling come or not.
Qur’an and Sunnah
We feed you for the sake of God alone: We seek neither recompense nor thanks from you (Quran 76:9). The performance is stripped out, which is what leaves the small act standing whether or not you felt anything while doing it.
إِنَّمَا نُطۡعِمُكُمۡ لِوَجۡهِ ٱللَّهِ لَا نُرِيدُ مِنكُمۡ جَزَآءࣰ وَلَا شُكُورًا
saying, ‘We feed you for the sake of God alone: We seek neither recompense nor thanks from you
Qur’an 76:9read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A review of loving-kindness and compassion meditation describes the techniques and the early empirical work, and is candid that the trial base behind them was small at the time of writing. That candour is the model here. These are reasonable things to practise, and nobody should be told that a rearranged face guarantees a change of heart.
Hofmann SG, Grossman P, Hinton DE. (2011). Loving-kindness and compassion meditation: potential for psychological interventions.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Expression and emotion are joined loosely, so you can wear one without the other arriving.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
When you notice you have stopped really being there with someone, change your body before you try to change your effort. Sit forward, unfold your arms, turn to face them properly.
Feeling close to your own people does not automatically make you kinder to everybody else. Sometimes it does the opposite and sharpens the line between us and them.
Repeating back what your partner said proves you were listening. It does not prove you were touched by it, and they can tell the difference.