An investigation of the impact of a brief self-compassion intervention for self-criticism

Abstract

The first part of this thesis is a review of the literature comparing the constructs of self compassion and self-esteem, to address the question of whether self-compassion offers greater protection than self-esteem in challenging situations. This includes correlational studies, exploring associations between trait self-compassion, trait self-esteem and a range of outcomes in challenging situations, as well as experimental studies, investigating the impact of experimentally induced state self-compassion and state self-esteem in challenging situations. The overall pattern of results provides some support for the idea that self-compassion does offer greater protection than self-esteem and this review considers theoretical explanations as to why this might be the case. However, the discussion highlights a number of methodological limitations and suggests that there is a need for more experimental research on this topic.

The second part of this thesis is an empirical paper investigating the impact of a self-compassion intervention for self-criticism. After completing a self-criticism induction task, participants received a self-compassion intervention, a thought challenging intervention, or no intervention (control group). The overall pattern of results shows that the self-compassion intervention had a beneficial impact on state self-esteem, affect, and effort ratings, in comparison with the other two conditions. The thought challenging intervention also offered some protection against the negative effects of selfcriticism on state self-esteem and affect. The measure employed to assess performance was problematic, preventing conclusions from being drawn. The discussion makes links to theory and previous research, as well as considering the limitations of this study and potential avenues for future research.

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