Comparing Facets of Self-Compassion in the Context of Social Judgement

ObjectivesInducing self-compassion has been shown to be helpful in the context of social judgement. Typical self-compassion exercises guide individuals through mindfulness, self-kindness, and common humanity prompts. The purpose of the present study was to examine the benefit of targeting each facet of self-compassion individually, compared to a comprehensive self-compassion induction, and a control condition, for a social stressor.MethodParticipants (n = 424) were asked to recall a time when they felt judged by others, and then were randomly assigned to one of five conditions: mindfulness, common humanity, self-kindness, self-compassion total (which contained prompts for all three facets of self-compassion), or an inactive control. Those in the self-compassion conditions completed writing prompts corresponding to their assigned condition.ResultsOnly participants in the self-kindness and self-compassion total conditions reported that they would approach a future similar social judgement situation with significantly greater state self-kindness, less social anxiety, and greater acceptance, compared to the control condition, with small effect sizes. The common humanity and mindfulness conditions did not significantly differ from the control condition.ConclusionOverall, the present study results suggest that the self-kindness facet may be the most sensitive to change and that targeting self-kindness may be the most impactful in the context of social judgement.PreregistrationThis study is not preregistered.