Focus On Compassion To Boost Wellbeing
21 May 2010
The research team (from left): Professor James Elander, Dr Frances Maratos, Kirsten McEwan and Professor Paul Gilbert, with an image from the software game in the backdrop.
Collaborative Project Announcement Between The University of Derby and Derbyshire Mental Health Services NHS Trust:
A new software game to help people who are highly self-critical search out kindness and compassion may boost their long term wellbeing.
That's the aim of new research being conducted by psychologists at the University of Derby and Derbyshire Mental Health Services NHS Trust within the collaborative Mental Health Research Unit, which champions innovative new therapies using compassionate approaches.
Early research by the team based at Kingsway Hospital in Derby, which set the background to the latest work, has investigated how people react when they see images of people with a range of different facial expressions conveying a variety of moods.
The academic team has now secured £82,000 research funding from The Leverhulme Trust to take the study further and produce the software game.
The team, includes world expert in depression Professor Paul Gilbert, Professor James Elander, Dr Frances Maratos, and PhD student Kirsten McEwan. They suggest people who are highly self critical and feel inadequate may often spurn the kindness of others - because this makes them feel threatened.
The study found that many participants with high self-criticism either avoided looking directly at people displaying compassionate expressions or simply appeared not to process them, indicating that they found compassionate faces threatening.
They concluded that highly critical people might actually be non-consciously 'programmed' to search out the more critical faces and to fail to process or avoid compassion faces. This 'programming' is likely to be the result of living within, and associating with, a negative environment.
Yet, this creates a 'Catch 22' dilemma for that person as the team's wider research suggests that receiving kindness and compassion from others can improve the long term wellbeing of people with high self-criticism, and depression and anxiety issues.
The team is developing a new software game featuring a wall of about a dozen threatening faces and just one compassionate face to 'train' individuals to seek out the compassionate face in the crowd, and non-consciously focus their attention to search out the compassionate face.
Continual practice with the game is designed to alter the non-conscious negative programmes that self-critical people often display, and encourage their attention to focus on the positive and compassionate face. Research will determine if this then boosts wellbeing.
The team said: "If playing the game of looking for the compassionate face in the crowd improves wellbeing, then it is hoped that the research could pave the way for advances in therapeutic game development.
"This could also boost the self help options for individuals who need to improve their health and wellbeing, and reduce anxiety disorders."
During the team's early research to gauge people's reactions to different facial expressions on a computer screen, the team used 'dot probe' technology to track visual attention. The psychologists monitored volunteers looking at images of a range of compassionate, critical, and neutral facial expressions.
A team of professional actors had posed for the range of facial expressions which were captured on camera and placed on a computer screen.
Research is ongoing with more volunteers using the new software game to find the compassionate face in the crowd of faces, with research conclusions expected later this year.
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