Why accepting negative emotions might be the first step to compassion

Birgit Koopmann-Holm is an associate professor of psychology and faculty director of the Culture Impacts Emotion Lab at Santa Clara University. In her research, Koopmann-Holm examines how people learn what to feel and the ways culture can play a role in shaping their emotional lives. She aims to translate her findings into practical interventions that support more effective, compassionate intercultural interactions in the world.

What questions or challenges are at the heart of your current work?

Broadly speaking, I’m interested in how culture shapes how we view and experience emotions. For example, do we see negative emotions as something to avoid or embrace? I study how emotions are not just internal states; they are embedded in our lived experiences.

In my lab, we examine cultural and individual differences in how people notice others’ suffering. In one study, participants viewed an ambiguous image that could be interpreted as either a smiling or a distressed face. We found key differences in how frequently people noticed the distressed face. People who said they wanted to avoid negative emotions were more likely to perceive a smiling one.

This led me to a related question: how does noticing suffering connect to whether people acknowledge broader social problems, such as systemic racism? Our findings suggest that when people want to avoid feeling negative, they are less likely to realize others are suffering, and in turn, less likely to acknowledge that systemic racism is a problem. The motivation to avoid negative emotions can be a barrier to recognizing some of the horrible realities in our world. We’re working on designing interventions to help people become more accepting of negative emotions as a first step toward acknowledging problems and ultimately changing the status quo.

Why is this issue important for the world to address at this time?

This work is very timely. People across the globe are suffering, and it feels like it’s getting worse every day. Noticing and acknowledging suffering is the first step in a compassionate response. At the same time, our world is becoming more interconnected with more people living and working together in multicultural societies. When people from different cultural contexts interact, they may not immediately know how to respond to one another with compassion. It’s important to make people aware of different cultural norms around emotions. What we consider to be comforting and compassionate might not be considered comforting and compassionate to others.

Political polarization is also very pronounced in the world right now. We desperately need people to be open to having difficult conversations with those who hold different views. In my research, we’re exploring the idea that if people are more willing to experience negative emotions, they might also be more willing to engage in these kinds of dialogues. I’m truly thankful I can continue doing this work at Santa Clara and that I can work with students who are interested in it.

Why have you chosen to dedicate your career to this research?

Back home in Germany, I started out as a psychology major because I thought I wanted to be a therapist. As part of my undergraduate studies, I was required to choose a minor to enrich my experience and I chose cultural anthropology. While taking classes in my chosen minor, I realized there are different ways to study and understand the human experience. I realized how psychology has a Western bias in studies of how we think, feel, and behave, so I wanted to explore how people in different cultures view emotions. 

My focus on culture and compassion, specifically, came from a more personal experience. Years later, when I was in graduate school in the United States, my grandmother passed away. I was very close to her. I received sympathy cards from my friends in the U.S., and although I knew their kindness came from a good place, the cards felt different from what I was used to in Germany. In Germany, many sympathy cards are black and white and explicitly acknowledge grief, with sentiments like “words will not lighten a heavy heart.” The cards I received in the U.S. were colorful and looked at grief through a silver lining, saying things like “memories will bring you comfort” or “this person is in a better place.” Even though I understood the intent, it all felt very foreign to me. I realized that people in different cultural contexts might have different views about what a compassionate response might entail. This experience sparked my interest to conduct a study on cultural differences in compassion and sympathy cards specifically, and all of my research has continued to broadly examine how people view and experience emotions.

How have your students impacted your research?

Without my students, I wouldn’t be exposed to so many diverse perspectives. I work with students from many different cultural contexts and they’ve helped shape the direction of my research. For example, I was able to start research in Ecuador on how people conceptualize compassion because one of my students was from there and was interested in collecting data there. She was so enthusiastic about the study and I was happy to support the project.

My students also ask amazing questions. By thinking through these questions with them, I often learn something new. I’ve read so much literature that I’m sometimes biased toward thinking about studying a specific topic in a certain way. My students’ questions spark ideas about new ways to study our complex emotional lives. 

What’s a book in your field that you think everyone should read?

I would recommend Between Us: How Cultures Create Emotions by Dutch psychologist Batja Mesquita. It’s a fabulous book that helps people rethink what emotions really are. She points out that emotional processes unfold between people, rather than the more popularized Western view that emotions are primarily internal, individual experiences. The book challenges our deeply held assumptions about emotions and makes cultural psychology research accessible to the general public. It’s a fun read!