How Does Trait Self-Compassion Benefit Self-Control in Daily Life? An Experience Sampling Study
- PDF / 428,457 Bytes
- 8 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 16 Downloads / 188 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
How Does Trait Self-Compassion Benefit Self-Control in Daily Life? An Experience Sampling Study Tak Sang Chow 1
&
Chin Ming Hui 2
Accepted: 16 September 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Objectives This experience sampling study examined the roles of trait self-compassion in everyday self-control. Specifically, this study examined whether trait self-compassion influences people’s self-efficacy in handling difficult self-control demands, and subsequently, their self-control success. Method The participants were asked to respond to five random signals per day for seven consecutive days. When responding to each signal, they first indicated if they had exerted self-control over the past 30 min and, if yes, reported their momentary selfcontrol experiences such as perceived difficulty, self-efficacy, and success. Trait self-compassion was measured 1 week before the experience sampling phase. A total of 1725 self-control episodes from 115 college students were analyzed. Results No main effects of trait self-compassion on self-control difficulty, self-efficacy, and success were observed. Nevertheless, trait self-compassion interacted with perceived difficulty in predicting self-efficacy. Specifically, perceived difficulty was associated with reduced self-efficacy, only among individuals low in trait self-compassion. Conclusions Self-compassionate people appeared to be better at protecting self-efficacy when dealing with difficult self-control tasks. The findings provide nuanced views on how trait self-compassion may be beneficial to self-control in everyday life. Keywords Self-control . Self-compassion . Self-efficacy . Experience sampling
Self-compassion is associated with a wide range of positive psychological outcomes (for a recent review, see Bluth and Neff 2018; Ferrari et al. 2019). Although past studies suggested that self-compassion improves self-control (e.g., Hallion et al. 2019; Kelly et al. 2010), little has been known about the mechanisms that underlie the effects of trait selfcompassion on momentary self-control outcomes. Moreover, past studies primarily focused on health-related domains. The
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-020-01509-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Tak Sang Chow [email protected] 1
Hong Kong Shue Yan University, Room LG105, Academic Building, North Point, Hong Kong
2
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Room 344, Sino Building, Sha Tin, Hong Kong
impact of trait self-compassion on self-control in other life domains was seldom tested. According to Neff (2003), self-compassion consists of three interrelated components: (a) being kind and understanding to one’s suffering, (b) recognizing one’s vulnerability as part of the universal human condition, and (c) recognizing and accepting one’s present experience, whether it is positive or negative. The past 17 years of research has consistently found that self-compa
Data Loading...
