Self-compassion and relationship maintenance: The moderating roles of conscientiousness and gender.

Abstract

Should intimates respond to their interpersonal mistakes with self-criticism or with self-compassion? Although it is reasonable to expect self-compassion to benefit relationships by promoting self-esteem, it is also reasonable to expect self-compassion to hurt relationships by removing intimates’ motivation to correct their interpersonal mistakes. Two correlational studies, 1 experiment, and 1 longitudinal study demonstrated that whether self-compassion helps or hurts relationships depends on the presence versus absence of dispositional sources of the motivation to correct interpersonal mistakes. Among men, the implications of self-compassion were moderated by conscientiousness. Among men high in conscientiousness, self-compassion was associated with greater motivation to correct interpersonal mistakes (Studies 1 and 3), observations of more-constructive problem-solving behaviors (Study 2), reports of more accommodation (Study 3), and fewer declines in marital satisfaction that were mediated by decreases in interpersonal problem severity (Study 4); among men low in conscientiousness, self-compassion was associated with these outcomes in the opposite direction. Among women, in contrast, likely because women are inherently more motivated than men to preserve their relationships for cultural and/or biological reasons, self-compassion was never harmful to the relationship. Instead, women’s self-compassion was positively associated with the motivation to correct their interpersonal mistakes (Study 1) and changes in relationship satisfaction (Study 4), regardless of conscientiousness. Accordingly, theoretical descriptions of the implications of self-promoting thoughts for relationships may be most complete to the extent that they consider the presence versus absence of other sources of the motivation to correct interpersonal mistakes.

The relationship of hope to self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction

“…Self-Compassion. Neff's (2003b) 26-item Self-Compassion Scale is commonly used to measure self-compassion (Akin & Eroglu, 2013;Baker & McNulty, 2011;Neff & Beretvas, 2013). In 2011 Raes and colleagues developed and tested a 12-item short version of this scale (Raes, Pommier, Neff, & Van Gucht, 2011).…”

Examining the predictive role of self-compassion on flourishing in Turkish university students

“…In these research it was found that self-compassion is linked positively to social relationship, emotional intelligence, self-determination (Neff, 2003a), social support (Akın, Kayış, & Satıcı, 2011), psychological well-being (Akın, 2008a), learning-approach goals (Akın, 2008b), life satisfaction, social relatedness (Neff, 2003b), reflective and affective wisdom, personal initiative, curiosity and exploration, optimism, positive affect, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness (Baker & McNulty, 2011;, and relational-interdependent self-construal (Akın & Eroglu, 2013). Conversely, the other studies have showed that selfcompassion is negatively related to interpersonal cognitive distortions (Akın, 2010a), loneliness (Akın, 2010b), submissive behavior (Akın, 2009), automatic thoughts (Akın, 2012), depression, anxiety, rumination, thought suppression (Neff, 2003b), performance-approach/avoidance goals (Akın, 2008b), internet addiction (Iskender & Akın, 2011), social anxiety, fear of negative evaluation (Werner et al, 2012), and neuroticism .…”

The Effect of Religious Priming on Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men

“…This effect is amplified when self-compassion is combined with high conscientiousness, motivating individuals to attend to strife and fix relational mistakes (Baker & McNulty, 2011). It naturally follows that mindfulness and common humanity correlate positively with relational-interdependence of the self-construal, or defining oneself in terms of one's close others, and feelings of seclusion have a strong negative correlation with self-compassion (Akin & Eroğlu, 2013).…”

“…Because self-compassion is an important predictor of an individual's reaction to interpersonal conflict, it could play an equally important role in cyberbullying involvement (Baker & McNulty, 2011;Neff, 2004;Petersen, 2014). By identifying an association between self-compassion and cyberbullying, the current research could pave the way for the development of more effective interventions to eliminate cyberbullying behaviors, just as Neff et al (2007) demonstrated that raising self-compassion could improve one's psychological well-being.…”