UC Riverside

Recent work has identified self-compassion, or, the tendency to treat oneself with kindness in the face of suffering or failure, as a promising target for well-being interventions. Although research focusing on self-compassion has increased exponentially in recent years, the mechanisms and boundary conditions of these interventions are still unclear. Some research posits emotion regulation as a mechanism in the relationship between self-compassion and positive outcomes, but many open questions remain. The present study was designed to address two main aims: first, to test two brief self-kindness exercises to identify unique benefits of thinking kindly of oneself relative to behaving kindly toward oneself. Second, I sought to experimentally, cross-sectionally, and longitudinally investigate the relationship between self-compassion and emotion regulation. To that end, 739 undergraduate students participated in a weeklong study, where they were randomly assigned to engage in either a cognitive self-kindness activity (i.e., self-compassion), a behavioral self-kindness activity, or a neutral activity. Most of my between-condition hypotheses were unsupported, although ancillary analyses suggest that specific participants—namely, Latinx and first-generation college students—may have uniquely benefited from the self-compassion exercise. Contrary to my predictions, engaging in behavioral self-kindness increased self-compassion relative to the control condition and, surprisingly, those who were instructed to practice self-compassion. Most of my hypotheses about the association between trait self-compassion and emotion regulation were supported, replicating and extending patterns identified in previous research. Further, results from multilevel growth models suggest that trait self-compassion uniquely predicts emotion regulation success and use of cognitive reappraisal over the course of 1 week. Overall, the present work builds on prior research linking self-compassion, well-being, and emotion regulation, but null and counterintuitive results suggest that more research is necessary to understand the complex relationships among these constructs.