Social psychologist David DeStefano and his colleagues had some important questions: Empirically speaking, does the experience of compassion toward one person measurably affect our actions and attitudes toward other people? If so, are there practical steps we can take to further cultivate this feeling?  So, like good scientists, they conducted a couple experiments. Here’s what they found: What these results suggest is that the compassion we feel for others is not solely a function of what befalls them: if our minds draw an association between a victim and ourselves — even a relatively trivial one — the compassion we feel for his or her suffering is amplified greatly. What does this mean for cultivating compassion in society? It means that effortful adherence to religious or philosophical dictums…