Ashley Batts Allen

Self-Compassion and Well-being among Older Adults

Two studies assessed the role of self-compassion as a moderator of the relationship between physical health and subjective well-being in the elderly. In Study 1, 132 participants, ranging in age from 67 to 90 years, completed a questionnaire that assessed their perceptions of their physical health, self-compassion, and subjective well-being. Participants who were in good physical health had high subjective well-being regardless of their level of self-compassion. However, for participants with poorer physical health, self-compassion was associated with greater subjective well-being. In Study 2, 71 participants between the ages of 63 and 97 completed a questionnaire assessing self-compassion, well-being, and their willingness to use assistance for walking, hearing, and memory. Self-compassionate participants reported being less bothered by the use of assistance than those low in self-compassion, although the relationship between self-compassion and willingness to use assistive devices was mixed. These findings suggest that self-compassion is associated with well-being in later life and that interventions to promote self-compassion may improve quality of life among older adults.

The Concept of Ego Threat in Social and Personality Psychology: Is Ego Threat a Viable Scientific Construct?:

Although widely invoked as an explanation for psychological phenomena, ego threat has been conceptualized and induced in a variety of ways. Most contemporary research conceptualizes ego threat as a threat to a person’s self-image or self-esteem, but experimental operationalizations of ego threat usually confound threats to self-esteem with threats to public image or decreased control over negative events, leading to an inability to distinguish the effects of threats to people’s personal egos from threats to public image or threats to feelings of control. This article reviews research on ego threat, discusses experimental manipulations that confound ego threat with other processes, and makes recommendations regarding the use of ego threat as a construct in personality and social psychology.

Self-compassionate Responses to Aging

PURPOSE Evidence suggests that self-compassion may be beneficial to older adults who are struggling to cope with the aging process. The purpose of this study was to assess the thoughts of self-compassionate older adults and to determine whether self-compassionate thoughts relate to positive responses to aging. DESIGN AND METHODS Participants (n = 121, M = 76.2 years, approximately 65% female) completed measures of self-compassion and self-esteem; were randomly assigned to write about a positive, negative, or neutral age-related event; and completed questions about the event and their reactions. Responses were coded for self-compassionate themes and emotional tone. RESULTS Analyses indicated that self-compassion predicted positive responses to aging and that self-compassionate thoughts explained the relationship between trait self-compassion and emotional tone as well as the belief that ones attitude helped them cope with age-related events. IMPLICATIONS Although older adults who were low versus high in self-compassion experienced similar age-related events, participants high in self-compassion thought about these events in ways that predicted positive outcomes. Encouraging older adults to be more self-compassionate may improve well-being in old age.

The Analogue-I and the Analogue-Me: The Avatars of the Self

The analogue-I and analogue-me refer to mental self-relevant images that take a first-person vs. third-person perspective, respectively. Mental self-analogues are essential for goal setting, planning, and rehearsal of behavioral strategies, but they often fuel emotional and interpersonal problems when people react to their analogue selves as if they were real. This article examines the beneficial and detrimental consequences of the analogue-I and analogue-me, with a focus on egoic reactions that arise from how people think about themselves in their own minds. Phenomena such as counterfactual thinking, interpersonal conflict, jealousy, and overreactions to inconsequential events are used to illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of the mental self-analogues.

Presenting a Self-Compassionate Image After an Interpersonal Transgression

Two studies investigate the presentation of self-compassion following an interpersonal transgression. In study 1 (N = 228), participants imagined letting someone down. Self-compassionate participants were less likely to endorse self-critical statements and more likely to endorse self-compassionate statements. Study 2 (N = 208) investigated peoples preference for self-compassionate versus self-critical statements after someone let them down. Less self-compassionate participants preferred and were more likely to forgive someone who made self-critical statements. More self-compassionate participants preferred self-compassionate responses and were just as likely to forgive someone regardless of the type of response. These findings support the hypothesis that self-compassion leads to more self-compassionate presentations and presents a more nuanced understanding of responses to self-compassionate and self-critical presentations in an apology context.

Reactions to Others' Selfish Actions in the Absence of Tangible Consequences

This research assessed the role of perceived selfishness in peoples reactions to events without tangible consequences. In Experiment 1, participants were assigned to complete a boring task by another person who gave a selfish, legitimizing, or exculpatory explanation for the decision. However, half of the participants knew that the others decision was irrelevant and that they would complete the task regardless of the persons decision. In a second experiment, participants were told that the decision was irrelevant either before or after learning that the other person assigned them to do the boring task. Both studies showed that participants who received a selfish explanation responded strongly to the other person whether or not the persons decision had tangible consequences for them.

Resisting self-compassion: Why are some people opposed to being kind to themselves?

Abstract Although self-compassion is associated with positive emotions, resilience, and well-being, some people resist recommendations to treat themselves with kindness and compassion. This study investigated how people’s personal values and evaluations of self-compassionate behaviors relate to their level of self-compassion. After completing measures of trait self-compassion and values, participants rated how they would view themselves after behaving in a self-compassionate and self-critical way. Overall, participants associated self-compassion with positive attributes that connote emotional well-being, yet only those who were low in trait self-compassion associated self-compassionate responding with negative attributes that involve low motivation, self-indulgence, low conscientiousness, and poor performance. Participants’ endorsement of basic values was not meaningfully related to their evaluations of self-compassionate vs. self-critical behaviors or to self-compassion scores. We propose that self-compassion might operate as an instrumental value insofar as those high vs. low in self-compassion differ in their beliefs about whether self-compassion affects performance-related outcomes positively or negatively.

Women’s empowerment: Finding strength in self-compassion

ABSTRACT Empowerment is often a desired outcome for health programs; however, it is rarely evaluated. One way to increase empowerment may be through self-compassion. The authors of the current study aimed to determine whether self-compassion and empowerment were positively related. Two hundred and five women (ages 18 to 48 years) were recruited from a pool of undergraduate students at a university in the southeastern United States in the summer/fall of 2012. Participants completed the study using Qualtrics, an online survey system. Participants wrote about a fight in a romantic relationship and were randomly assigned to write about the fight either self-compassionately or generally. Empowerment and perceptions of the fight were assessed as dependent measures. Hierarchical regression analyses investigated the relation of self-compassion, manipulated self-compassion, and their interaction with empowerment. A significant positive relationship was found between self-compassion and empowerment. However, manipulated self-compassion was not significantly related to empowerment. These findings suggested that self-compassion and empowerment were strongly related, but using a short-term self-compassion intervention may not be strong enough to influence empowerment. Empowerment-based practitioners may find empowerment increases more easily in women who are self-compassionate. If self-compassion is incorporated into empowerment settings, a long-term intervention may be necessary.