Compassion Encyclopedia is a resource where the public, students, teachers, and researchers can easily find information on the scientific study of compassion, kindness, love, and related beneficial qualities of the mind. It is a continuously updatable website that allows for an expansion of content in scope and depth, ensuring that new knowledge can be easily added and that the information is always accurate.
The resource has multiple audiences and goals:
- Be a go-to source for compassion teachers, people who are directly engaged in the cultivation of a compassionate life through varying practices, and are looking to supplement their teachings with science-based evidence.
- Provide current compassion researchers with an online database of reliable information that they can share among themselves and with their students.
- Assist members of the public in learning about this area of research and bring an awareness that science can be used to further our understanding of states that lead to flourishing.
- Allow researchers with expertise in different fields to quickly familiarize themselves with these topics, encourage them to transfer and utilize their own skills within this domain, and motivate a greater allocation of scientific resources to the study of beneficial qualities of the mind.
The encyclopedia will disseminate the various research avenues currently in use – psychology, sociology, neuroscience, physiology, genetics – provide a foundation for understanding how these findings can be used in new scientific and technological avenues – artificial intelligence, brain-machine interfaces, psychedelics – and be a guide for all learners, containing definitions, summary articles, connected topics, and more.