Brescia Psychology Undergraduate Honours Theses

Date of Award

Spring 4-18-2023

Program

Psychology

Supervisor

Dr. Leslie Janes

Abstract

Self-compassion is a non-evaluative, protective, and positive attitude comprised of three components: (a) self-kindness, whereby in times of suffering or failure, one is understanding towards themselves, (b) common humanity, referring to the understanding that one’s experiences are part of a larger collective experience, and (c) mindfulness, where one remains conscious of painful thoughts without over-identifying with them (Neff, 2003a). Increasing self-compassion has been shown to improve mental health outcomes, and is related to the concepts of perfectionism, trait resilience, and the five-factor model of personality (Macbeth & Gumley, 2012). The current study assessed the relationships between adaptive, maladaptive, and non-perfectionism with self-compassion using an ANOVA. A correlational approach was also used to examine self-compassion, trait resilience, the “Big Five” traits, and perfectionism. Results showed that the three perfectionism groups differed from self-compassion significantly, and that maladaptive perfectionists exercised significantly less self-compassion than adaptive perfectionists. Further, neuroticism was found to be the only personality variable outside of perfectionism to significantly relate to self-compassion, where high levels of neuroticism were associated with low self-compassion. This study lends additional support for the relationships between perfectionism, neuroticism, and self-compassion.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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