Where the Head Meets the Heart: ‘Enlightened’ Compassion Lies Between Big Five Openness/Intellect and Agreeableness

Abstract

Enlightened compassion is a morally significant personality trait describing the tendency to show regard for others in an open-minded (vs. rigid or parochial) manner. We examine this trait through a “bottom-up” lens, asking: where is enlightened compassion located within the Big Five (B5) taxonomy? Across three studies comprising seven samples (total N = 2,522), we measure enlightened compassion as an interstitial facet lying between the Compassion aspect of B5 Agreeableness and the Openness aspect of B5 Openness/Intellect. The Enlightened Compassion Scale (EC Scale) has solid structural and content validity, converging strongly with Compassion and Openness (Study 1). Consistent with the bandwidth-fidelity trade-off in hierarchical models of personality traits, enlightened compassion demonstrates incremental validity over-and-above these B5 aspects when predicting theoretically relevant traits (e.g., moral imagination and moral expansiveness; Study 2) and behaviour (expansive charitable donation; Study 3). By locating enlightened compassion and its correlates within the organising framework of the B5, our work serves to deepen and integrate accumulated knowledge on this morally salient feature of personality.