The relationship  between self-esteem and self-forgiveness: Understanding the mediating role of  positive and negative self-compassion            

Abstract

Self-esteem and self-compassion represent well-known positive self-resources with significant implications for life outcomes of people belonging to individualistic and collectivistic cultures, respectively. Both the constructs have been suggested to shape the nature and extent of self-forgiveness through dissimilar mechanisms. The study examined the mediating role of positive and negative self-compassion between the relationship between self-esteem and self-forgiveness. Employing a convenient sampling, 144 male (M = 22.10, SD = 1.66) and 124 female participants (M = 21.98, SD = 1.90) were chosen for a correlational research design. The findings showed that Self-Esteem and Positive Self-Compassion had significant positive correlations with Self-Forgiveness. Conversely, Negative Self-Compassion exhibited negative correlations with these measures. Self-esteem and Positive Self-Compassion accounted for significant positive variance in Realization & Reparation and Overall Self-Forgiveness and significant negative variability in Attribution. Negative Self-Compassion accounted for positive significant variance in Guilt and negative significant variability in Realization & Reparation and Attribution. Both Positive and Negative Self-Compassion significantly mediated the relationships among Self-Esteem and Realization & Reparation, Guilt and Attribution. It evinced coexistence and working of self-esteem and self-compassion in a collectivistic culture with more pronounced effects of the later. Re-conceptualization of self-compassion is recommended.

Triguna (three qualities) personality model and two-factor conceptualization of self-compassion: a new insight to understand achievement goal orientations

“…In conclusion, the findings of the present study showed self-compassion to be closely associated with adaptive motivational patterns in academic contexts, which has also been reported by previous researchers (Neff et al, 2005(Neff et al, , 2020Pandey et al, 2019Pandey et al, , 2020. The findings evinced that self-compassion may have facilitated the learning process by freeing the student participants from the unacceptable consequences of self-criticism, isolation and over-identification in the face of failures and inadequacies on one hand and may have provided them with a positive self-attitude, positive emotionality and logical mind through self-kindness, common humanity and emotional balance on the other.…”

“…For instance, in a metaanalytic review, Muris and Petrocchi (2017) observed that positive components of self-compassion (selfkindness, common humanity and mindfulness) were negatively associated with mental health problems whereas the negative components (self-judgement, isolation and over-identification) exhibited a positive association with psychopathological symptoms. Similar findings have also been reported by other researchers (Lopez, Sanderman, Ranchor, & Schroevers, 2018;Pandey, Tiwari, Parihar, & Rai, 2019;Pandey et al, 2020;Pfattheicher, Geiger, Hartung, Weiss, & Schindler, 2017). These observations suggest that the six domains of the SCS seem to measure two related yet different domains, viz., self-compassion and self-rejection or self-contempt.…”

“…Recently, Muris et al (2018) presented some evidence for the validity of the two factor (or bi-factor) model of positive and negative self-compassion. These researchers observed that positive self-compassion was linked with adaptive coping, planning, positive reframing, self-forgiveness and flourishing and healthy functioning while negative self-compassion was related to maladaptive coping, anxiety and depression (Muris et al, 2018;Muris & Otgaar, 2020;Pandey et al, 2019Pandey et al, , 2020Sirois, Molnar, & Hirsch, 2015). Similar findings were also reported by some other researchers who have found a positive correlation between positive self-compassion and various adaptive coping styles such as active tackling, social support seeking, and reassuring thoughts but a negative association with negative self-compassion (Allen & Leary, 2010;Tiwari et al, 2020).…”

The Examination of the Mediator Role of Optimism, Self-Compassion, Altruism and Gratitude in the Relationship Between Cognitive Distortions and Forgiveness of Emerging Adults

“…In this context, it can be said that self-compassion plays a protective role against emotional disturbances caused by cognitive distortions in the individual (Stephenson et al, 2018). On the other hand, while there are strong positive relationships between emerging adults’ self-compassion and self-forgiveness (Breen et al, 2010; Kılıç & Tunç, 2020; Pandey et al, 2020), self-compassion has been proven to be an important predictor of emerging adults’ self-forgiveness (Oral & Arslan, 2017). In their study on university psychology students, Woodyatt et al (2017) found that while self-compassion reduces self-punishment, it increases self-forgiveness.…”

Understanding the role of forgiveness in shaping the flourishing of Hindu married couples

“…Forgiveness has been suggested to play an important role in human relationships of all sorts but its systematic empirical enquiry took a new momentum only after the establishment of Positive Psychology in 2000. Forgiveness involves intra-individual and pro-social change towards a perceived transgression situated in a specific interpersonal context (McCullough et al, 2001;Pandey et al, 2023;Singh et al, 2022aSingh et al, , 2022b. Forgiveness catalyzes positive changes that involve willingness, consent and conscious decision of the forgivers (Worthington et al, 2007).…”