Self-compassion helps preserve emotional well-being when experiencing failure by promoting more adaptive causal attributions
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Date
2020
Authors
Conway, Tara
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Abstract
The beneficial nature of self-compassion is well-established, but the mechanism by which it exerts its benefits has received little attention. This study sought to address this gap in the literature by evaluating the effect of self-compassion on responses to failure using the framework of attribution theory. Participants were randomly assigned to either a self-compassion (SC; N=413) or expressive writing task (EW; N=416), in order to experimentally manipulate state self-compassion, measured pre- and post-writing using the State Self-Compassion Scale (SSC). It was expected that SSC would increase post-writing for the SC group and would decrease for the EW group. All participants were then exposed to a failure manipulation (test failure) and causal attributions were assessed by asking participants to rate the perceived cause of their test performance on four causal dimensions: locus, stability, globality, and controllability. Measures of state shame (State Shame & Guilt Scale; Experiential Shame Scale) and affect (positive and negative) were administered pre- and post-failure to capture failure-induced distress (i.e., post-failure state shame and affect, controlling for pre-failure levels). Serial mediation regression analyses were conducted to evaluate whether the group effect (SC vs. EW) on failure-induced distress would be mediated by post-writing SSC and failure attributions. It was hypothesized that those in the SC group would have higher SSC than those in the EW group, and that this would lead to more adaptive attributions for failure (i.e., less internal, less stable, less global, and more controllable), which would in turn be associated with less failure-induced distress. Results supported all study hypotheses. The SC group increased, and the EW group decreased in SSC, and there was a significant group difference post-writing. This group effect on SSC predicted more adaptive attributions for failure, which in turn predicted better emotional responses to failure (i.e., less SSG Shame, ESS Shame, and negative affect, and more positive affect). Effects were not moderated by depressive symptomatology, however self-compassionate writing was more effective for participants higher in depression. These results provide novel evidence suggesting that self-compassion helps preserve emotional well-being when experiencing failure by promoting healthier causal attributions for the failure. Clinical implications are discussed.
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Keywords
Self-compassion, Attributions, Failure, Shame, Expressive writing