PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

Self-Compassion and Reactions to Unpleasant Self-Relevant Events: The
Implications of Treating Oneself Kindly
Mark R. Leary and Eleanor B. Tate

Claire E. Adams

Duke University

Louisiana State University

Ashley Batts Allen

Jessica Hancock

Duke University

Wake Forest University

Five studies investigated the cognitive and emotional processes by which self-compassionate people deal
with unpleasant life events. In the various studies, participants reported on negative events in their daily
lives, responded to hypothetical scenarios, reacted to interpersonal feedback, rated their or others’
videotaped performances in an awkward situation, and reflected on negative personal experiences.
Results from Study 1 showed that self-compassion predicted emotional and cognitive reactions tonegative events in everyday life, and Study 2 found that self-compassion buffered people against negative
self-feelings when imagining distressing social events. In Study 3, self-compassion moderated negative
emotions after receiving ambivalent feedback, particularly for participants who were low in self-esteem.
Study 4 found that low-self-compassionate people undervalued their videotaped performances relative toobservers. Study 5 experimentally induced a self-compassionate perspective and found that selfcompassion leads people to acknowledge their role in negative events without feeling overwhelmed withnegative emotions. In general, these studies suggest that self-compassion attenuates people’s reactions tonegative events in ways that are distinct from and, in some cases, more beneficial than self-esteem.
Keywords: self-compassion, self-evaluation, self-esteem, self-criticism, coping

one’s inadequacies and failures, and recognizing that one’s experience is part of the common human experience” (p. 224). Presumably, a person high in self-compassion sees his or her problems, weaknesses, and shortcomings accurately, yet reacts withkindness and compassion rather than with self-criticism and harshness. Thus, self-compassion may buffer people against negative
events and engender positive self-feelings when life goes badly.
The process by which self-compassion protects people against
stressful events is presumably different from that of its morefamiliar cousin, self-esteem. Whereas self-esteem is associatedwith positive feelings about oneself and believing that one isvalued by others (Leary & MacDonald, 2003), self-compassion isan orientation to care for oneself. Not surprisingly, selfcompassionate people tend to have high self-esteem (Neff, 2003b),
presumably because reacting kindly rather than critically toward
oneself promotes positive self-feelings. However, the positive selffeelings that characterize self-compassionate people do not appear
to involve the hubris, narcissism, or self-enhancing illusions thatcharacterize many people who possess high self-esteem. Whereas
standard measures of trait self-esteem (e.g., Berger, 1952; Rosenberg, 1965) correlate positively with scores on the Narcissistic
Personality Inventory (Raskin & Hall, 1979), self-compassion
does not (Neff, 2003b). Furthermore, low self-compassion accounts for a sizable portion of unique variance in depression andanxiety, even with trait self-esteem partialed out, suggesting that

Psychologists have been interested for many years in factors that
promote coping, resilience, and subjective well-being (Bonanno,
2004; Diener, Lucas, & Oishi, 2002; Ryan & Deci, 2000; Ryff &Singer, 2002). Some people roll with life’s punches, facing failures, losses, and problems with equanimity, whereas others react
maladaptively to unpleasant situations or, worse, exacerbate theirdistress by ruminating excessively about life’s calamities, castigating themselves for their shortcomings, and catastrophizing
about their problems (Leary, 2004).
Neff (2003a, 2003b) recently identified a previously unstudied
construct that may play an important role in how people deal withlife’s problems—self-compassion. According to Neff (2003a),
self-compassion involves “being open to and moved by one’s own
suffering, experiencing feelings of caring and kindness toward
oneself, taking an understanding, nonjudgmental attitude toward

Mark R. Leary, Eleanor B. Tate, and Ashley Batts Allen, Department of
Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University; Claire E. Adams, Department of Psychology, Louisiana State University; Jessica Hancock, Department of Psychology, Wake Forest University.
A portion of this research was conducted at Wake Forest University. We
thank Anna Jarrell and Jessica Tolbert for their assistance as researchers.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addresssed to Mark R.
Leary, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Soc/Psych 306, Flowers Drive, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708. E-mail: leary@duke.edu

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2007, Vol. 92, No. 5, 887–904
Copyright 2007 by the American Psychological Association 0022-3514/07/$12.00
DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.92.5.887

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LEARY, TATE, ADAMS, ALLEN, AND HANCOCK

888

self-compassion contributes to well-being in ways that are distinct
from those of trait self-esteem.
In addition to showing that self-compassion correlates withpsychological well-being, researchers have begun to examine themoderating effects of self-compassion on people’s reactions tonegative events. Neff, Hsieh, and Dejitterat (2005) examined therelationship between self-compassion and reactions to academic
failure. Among students who received an unsatisfactory midterm
grade, self-compassion correlated positively with the emotionfocused coping strategies of acceptance and positive reinterpretation/growth and negatively with a focus on negative emotions andavoidance-oriented coping. Furthermore, self-compassion was
positively associated with mastery orientation (being motivated bycuriosity and the desire to develop one’s skills) but negatively
associated with performance orientation (the motivation to defend
or enhance one’s self-worth). These studies showed that selfcompassion moderates reactions to real and potential failure, possibly by reducing the aversiveness of events that threaten selfesteem.
These early findings suggest that self-compassion holds promise
as an important and interesting construct that facilitates resilienceand coping, but with only a few previous studies on the topic,
many key questions have not been addressed. The five studies
reported in the present article were designed to examine four
overlapping issues regarding the nature of self-compassion. The
first was to document that people low versus high in selfcompassion respond to negative events as Neff’s (2003a, 2003b)
conceptualization predicts. Previous research on self-compassion
has relied primarily on correlational designs, highlighting the needfor both experience-sampling and experimental studies. Thus, weused paradigms in which participants reported on unpleasantevents in their everyday lives (see Study 1), responded to standardized hypothetical scenarios (see Study 2), reacted to unpleasant interpersonal feedback in a laboratory experiment (see Study3), and performed an awkward and mildly embarrassing task (seeStudy 4). Second, we examined the thoughts of low- and highself-compassionate individuals in these studies to understand thecognitions that underlie a self-compassionate response to negative
events (see Studies 1, 2, 4, and 5). Understanding how selfcompassionate people think about themselves and their difficulties
may point the way to promoting self-compassion among those who
tend to treat themselves less kindly. Third, given the high correlation between self-compassion and self-esteem (Neff, 2003b), we
examined the unique contributions of both measured and manipulated self-compassion and self-esteem to people’s reactions (seeStudies 2, 3, and 5). Finally, to date, self-compassion has beenstudied only as a traitlike, dispositional variable, raising the question of whether it is possible to induce a transitory state ofself-compassion. In Study 5, we experimentally induced a selfcompassionate mindset to examine its effects, compare the effectsof state self-compassion with those of trait self-compassion, andexamine differences in the effects of inducing self-compassion
versus self-esteem.

Study 1
With the exception of Neff et al. (2005), self-compassion has notbeen studied in the context of people’s reactions to real-life events.
Thus, although researchers know that self-compassion correlates with

self-report measures of emotion, life satisfaction, and well-being(Neff, 2003b; Neff et al., 2005; Neff, Kirkpatrick, & Rude, in press),they do not know much about how it relates to reactions to everyday
events. In Study 1, we examined this issue by asking participants toreport on the worst thing that happened to them on four occasions
over a 20-day period. Because the worst things that happen to people
on a daily basis are typically rather mundane and inconsequential, wewere able to examine how self-compassion plays out in the context ofthe minor hassles, annoyances, inconveniences, and problems thatpeople regularly face.
Many of the problems that people confront on a daily basis areclearly their own fault, arising from their own intended or unintended actions. Others, of course, are not their fault, being causedby other people or events beyond their control. Neff’s (2003a)
conceptualization of self-compassion suggests that selfcompassion should be equally effective in buffering people against
negative events regardless of whether the event was their fault, andwe examined whether self-compassion moderates people’s reactions differently as a function of whether they perceive a negative
event to be their fault.

MethodParticipantsParticipants were 59 male and 58 female undergraduate students, ages 17–21, from introductory psychology classes who
participated to earn credit toward a course research participation
requirement.

Procedure
Mass testing. All participants completed the Self-Compassion
Scale (Neff, 2003b) in mass testing at the beginning of the semester.
The Self-Compassion Scale consists of 26 items that assess the three
dimensions that Neff (2003b) identified as components of selfcompassion: self-kindness (being kind and understanding toward oneself rather than harshly self-critical), common humanity (viewing
one’s negative experiences as a normal part of the human condition),and mindful acceptance (holding painful thoughts and feelings in
mindful awareness rather than overidentifying with them). Neff
(2003b) reported a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .92.
Introductory session. Participants reported in groups of about
20 for an introductory half-hour session in which the researcher
explained that the study was investigating how people react toevents that occur in their everyday lives. Participants were told
that, during the coming 3 weeks, they would receive four e-mailmessages instructing them to access a Web site where they would
complete a questionnaire about events that had occurred during theprevious 4 days.
Web-based questionnaire. Every fifth day after the introductory session, participants received an e-mail message providing a
hyperlink Internet address that allowed them to access the Webbased questionnaire. When they accessed the Web site, they were
instructed to recall either the worst thing that had happened tothem during the previous 4 days that was their fault (fault condition) or the worst thing that had happened to them during theprevious 4 days that was not their fault (no-fault condition). Overthe course of the study, all participants were asked to report on two

SELF-COMPASSION

events that were their fault and on two events that were not theirfault, with the order of conditions counterbalanced across participants.
After entering their student identification number, students recorded the date then described in two sentences or fewer the worst
thing that had happened during the past 4 days (that was or was nottheir fault). The instructions noted that “the worst thing that
happened during the past four days may have been quite bad or it
could have been very minor.” After describing the event, participants indicated whether the event primarily involved (a) work or
school; (b) my family; (c) my friends or social life; (d) athletics,
recreation, or leisure; (e) my physical health; (f) a romantic relationship; or (g) other. They indicated when the event occurred aswell as who was affected by it (only me, other people but not me,other people and me).
Participants then rated how “bad” the event was, the degree towhich they were responsible for the event, the degree to which
other people were responsible for the event, and “in the big schemeof things, how important was this event to you?” Ratings weremade on a 6-point scale, where 1 ⫽ not at all, 2 ⫽ slightly, 3 ⫽somewhat, 4 ⫽ moderately, 5 ⫽ very, and 6 ⫽ extremely. Participants also rated how they felt in the situation using 20 affectrelevant terms that were selected to assess sadness (sad, dejected,
down, depressed), anxiety (nervous, worried, anxious, fearful),anger (irritated, angry, hostile, mad), and self-conscious emotions(embarrassed, humiliated, guilty, ashamed).
Participants rated the degree to which they reacted in each of
several ways, also on 6-point scales. Some of these reactions werehypothesized to relate to self-compassion: (a) “I tried to be kind tomyself,” (b) “I tried to make myself feel better,” (c) “I kept thesituation in perspective,” and (d) “I was really hard on myself.”
Other reactions were assumed to be independent of selfcompassion (e.g., “I expressed my emotions to let off steam,” “I
took steps to fix the problem in a positive way or I made plans to
do so,” “I wanted to spend time alone,” “I sought out the company
of others,” “I gave myself time to come to terms with it,” “I tried
to understand my emotions”).
Participants then indicated the extent to which they had thought
each of several thoughts about the event (1 ⫽ I did not think thisthought at all, 2 ⫽ I thought this once, 3 ⫽ I thought this a few
times, 4 ⫽ I thought this several times, 5 ⫽ I kept thinking thisthought): (a) I’ve had a really bad day—I need to do something
nice for myself; (b) I seem to have bigger problems than mostpeople do; (c) In comparison to other people, my life is reallyscrewed up; (d) Why do these things always happen to me?; (e)This isn’t any worse than what lots of other people go through; (f)I’m a loser. Finally, participants rated how well they thought theyhandled the situation on a 6-point scale ranging from 1 (verypoorly) to 6 (very well) and the overall quality of the day on which
they experienced the negative event on a 6-point scale ranging
from 1 (very bad) to 6 (very good).

Results
Preliminary Analyses
Cronbach’s alpha coefficient on our sample was .91, and themean of the self-compassion scores was 18.9 (SD ⫽ 3.80). To
begin, we examined whether self-compassion was related to the889kinds of events that participants reported. Analyses of the categories of events that participants described revealed no relationshipbetween self-compassion and event category for any of the fourmeasurement periods (all ps ⬎ .05). Overall, most of the reported
events involved work or school (38.6%), friends or social life
(24.1%), physical health (11.4%), and romantic relationships(8.5%). Similarly, self-compassion scores were unrelated towhether the negative event affected only the participant (54.9%),
only other people (2.0%), or both the participant and other people(43.1%; ps ⬎ .05).
Perhaps most important, self-compassion was unrelated to answers to the questions “How bad was the thing that happened?”(M ⫽ 3.3) and “In the big scheme of things, how important was
this event to you?” (M ⫽ 2.9; ps ⬎ .05). Overall, participants whoscored low versus high in self-compassion reported events ofsimilar types and degrees of seriousness and importance. Thus, any
differences in thoughts and feelings are not likely to be because of
the fact that low- versus high-self-compassionate participants experienced or reported different kinds of events.

Hierarchical Linear Modeling
Data were analyzed using random coefficient modeling, specifically hierarchical linear modeling (HLM; Bryk, Raudenbush, &Congdon, 1998). Participants’ ratings of the negative events wereanalyzed using the following (within-person) Level 1 model:
y ij ⫽ ␤ 0j ⫹ ␤ 1 共 fault/no fault兲 ⫹ r ij

(1)

In these models, yij was a rating for a particular event (subscriptedi) for each participant (subscripted j), ␤0j was a random coefficient(an intercept) representing the mean of y across all four events fora particular participant, ␤1 was a random coefficient (a slope)
representing the effects of fault versus no-fault instructions on y,and rij represented within-person residual or error. Thus, thismodel estimated within-person ratings as a function of fault/nofault instructions.
Relationships between self-compassion and ratings of eventswere analyzed using the following (between-person) Level 2 models:␤ 0j ⫽ ␥ 00 ⫹ ␥ 01 共self-compassion兲 ⫹ u0(2)

␤ 1j ⫽ ␥ 10 ⫹ ␥ 11 共self-compassion兲 ⫹ u1

(3)

At Level 2, ␤0j were coefficients from the Level 1 model (i.e., theintercept from each participant’s model), ␥00 represented the grandmean of these coefficients, ␥01 represented the effects of selfcompassion scores, and u0 represented error. Likewise, ␤1j were
coefficients from the Level 1 model (i.e., the slope of each participant’s model), ␥10 represented the grand mean of these coefficients, ␥11 represented the effects of self-compassion scores, andu1 represented error.
Manipulation check on fault/no-fault instructions. Before examining the relationship between self-compassion and the outcome measures, it was important to ensure that participants properly reported events that were and were not their fault as instructed.
HLM conducted on answers to the question “To what extent were
you responsible for causing this event?” revealed a strong effect of
instructions (␥10 ⫽ 3.56), t(432) ⫽ 37.38, p ⬍ .001. Participants
instructed to describe events that were their fault (M ⫽ 5.1)

LEARY, TATE, ADAMS, ALLEN, AND HANCOCK

890

indicated that they were more responsible for the event than those
instructed to describe events that were not their fault (M ⫽ 1.5).
Conversely, participants instructed to describe events that were
their fault indicated that other people were less responsible for the
event (M ⫽ 2.1) than those instructed to describe events that were
not their fault (M ⫽ 3.6, ␥10 ⫽ ⫺1.48), t(432) ⫽ ⫺8.87, p ⬍ .001.
Further support for the efficacy of the instructions is provided
by the fact that the fault/no-fault instructions were related to how
hard participants indicated they were on themselves after the event(Ms ⫽ 2.3 vs. 1.5, ␥10 ⫽ 0.81), t(432) ⫽ 6.30, p ⬍ .001; the degree
to which participants took steps to fix the problem (Ms ⫽ 3.2 vs.
2.7, ␥10 ⫽ 0.45), t(432) ⫽ 3.13, p ⬍ .002; and feelings of bothself-conscious emotions (Ms ⫽ 7.2 vs. 5.4, ␥10 ⫽ 1.96), t(432) ⫽7.16, p ⬍ .001, and low self-esteem (Ms ⫽ 9.2 vs. 5.5, ␥10 ⫽3.95), t(432) ⫽ 13.04, p ⬍ .001. Given that people who are at fault
for a negative event would be expected to be hard on themselves,
try to fix the problem, experience self-conscious emotions (such as
embarrassment or guilt), and have lower state self-esteem, thesepatterns provide additional evidence that participants followed
instructions in reporting the proper type of events as instructed.
Self-compassion. As predicted, self-compassion was positively related to ratings of the items “I tried to be kind to myself”
and “I tried to make myself feel better” and negatively related toratings on “I was really hard on myself.” (See Table 1.) In addition,
participants high in self-compassion reported that they kept thesituation more in perspective. In contrast, self-compassion was not
related to reactions that had no conceptual relationship to selfcompassion—trying to take one’s mind off the problem, expressing emotions, trying to fix the problem, seeking out other people’s
company, or taking time to come to terms with the problem (seeTable 1). Thus, self-compassion was related, as expected, to par-ticular reactions that involved treating oneself kindly or reactingwith equanimity but not to general reactions or coping tactics.
As predicted, self-compassion was consistently associated withhaving fewer negative, pessimistic, and self-critical thoughts. As
seen in Table 1, the HLM analyses showed that self-compassion
was inversely related to believing that one has bigger problems inlife than most other people, wondering why “these things always
happen to me,” thinking that one’s life is more “screwed up” thanother people’s, and having the thought “I’m a loser.” In contrast,
self-compassion was positively associated with thinking that thenegative event was not worse than what many other people experience and unrelated to thinking “everyone has a bad day now andthen.”As expected, self-compassion was negatively related to negative
feelings, specifically, anxiety, sadness, and self-conscious emotions (see Table 1). The effect for anger, however, was not significant. Self-compassion was also positively related to participants’
ratings of how well they handled the difficult situation (␥01 ⫽3.60), t(107) ⫽ 37.38, p ⬍ .001. Finally, high self-compassion was
associated with rating the day on which the negative event happened more positively (␥01 ⫽ 0.07), t(107) ⫽ 2.35, p ⬍ .02. Thisfinding is particularly interesting given that self-compassion was
unrelated to ratings of the event itself, suggesting that negative
events taint people’s overall judgments of their days more if they
are low rather than high in self-compassion.

Moderating Effects of Self-Compassion on Reactions toFault and No-Fault Events
Self-compassion moderated participants’ reactions to events thatwere versus were not their fault on only three items. First, an effect

Table 1
Hierarchical Linear Modeling Results for Self-Compassion in Study 1
Variable

␥01

t

p

.05
.07
⫺.06
.06
.01
⫺.03
.03
.03
.01

1.90
2.01
⫺2.85
2.30
⫺0.19
⫺0.91
0.73
1.06
0.19

.057
.044
.005
.020
.85
.36
.47
.29
.85

⫺.06
⫺.02
.05
⫺.07
⫺.05
⫺.03

⫺2.88
⫺2.09
2.34
⫺3.20
⫺2.69
⫺1.00

.005
.037
.019
.002
.007
.32

⫺.22
⫺.11
⫺.15

⫺2.18
⫺1.96
⫺1.72

.036
.050
.083

Reaction
I tried to be kind to myself.
I tried to make myself feel better.
I was really hard on myself.
I kept the situation in perspective.
I tried to do things to take my mind off the problem.
I expressed my emotions to let off steam.
I took steps to fix the problem or made plans to do so.
I sought out the company of others.
I gave myself time to come to terms with it.
Thought
I seem to have bigger problems than most people do.
I’m a loser.
This isn’t any worse than what lots of other people go through.
Why do these things always happen to me?
In comparison to other people, my life is really screwed up.
Everyone has a bad day now and then.
EmotionAnxiety
Self-conscious emotions
Sadness

SELF-COMPASSION

was obtained on ratings of the item “I tried to be kind to myself”(␥11 ⫽ 0.07), t(107) ⫽ 2.99, p ⬍ .003. Calculation of conditional
regression equations revealed that self-compassion was positively
related to being kind to oneself for events that were one’s own
fault (B1 ⫽ .12, p ⬍ .001) but not for events that were not one’s
fault (B1 ⫽ .04, ns). On the item “I tried to understand myemotions,” self-compassion scores predicted trying to understand
one’s emotions when the event in question was one’s fault (B1 ⫽.08, p ⬍ .01) but not when it was not one’s fault (B1 ⫽ .02, ns).
Finally, ratings of self-conscious emotions (e.g., embarrassment,
shame, humiliation) were not moderated by self-compassion when
events were the participants’ fault (B1 ⫽ .02, ns), but selfcompassion was inversely related to such emotions in the case of
no-fault events (B1 ⫽ ⫺.10, p ⬍ .05).

Discussion
Self-compassion was consistently related to participants’ reactions to the worst events that happened to them in theoreticallymeaningful ways. In strong support of the Self-Compassion
Scale’s validity, self-compassionate participants more strongly
indicated that they tried to be kind to themselves and makethemselves feel better and less strongly indicated that they were
hard on themselves following negative events.
Many of the relationships between self-compassion and participants’ thoughts emerged on items that are conceptually related to
the “common humanity” aspect of self-compassion—the recognition that problems are a normal part of life and that one’s own
difficulties are generally no worse than other people’s problems.
For example, self-compassion was inversely related to thinking
that one has bigger problems than other people and that one’s own
life is more screwed up than other people’s but positively related
to believing that the negative event was not any worse than what
other people experience.
Given these differences in the reported content of participants’thoughts, it is not surprising that self-compassion also predictedequanimity in the aftermath of the worst things that happened topeople. Self-compassion was associated with keeping the situationin perspective, not endorsing the notion that one is a “loser,” lower
negative emotions, and later feeling that one handled the situation
better. As expected from Neff’s (2003a) conceptualization, selfcompassion did not generally moderate reactions to events differently that participants perceived were and were not their fault.
Only three items revealed such an effect. Self-compassion was
positively related to greater efforts to be kind to oneself and tounderstand one’s emotions after events that participants reported
were their fault and inversely related to self-conscious emotions
after events that were not their fault.

Study 2
Although we saw no evidence in Study 1 that low- and highself-compassionate participants reported different kinds of negative events, the possibility remains that low- and high-selfcompassionate participants reacted differently to the events theyreported because they experienced, remembered, or reported different kinds of events. To control for this possibility, we asked
participants in Study 2 to respond to a common set of scenarios.
Although using scenarios sacrifices realism, it allowed us to ex-

891

amine differences in how low- and high-self-compassionate people
react to a common set of situations.
The second purpose of Study 2 was to compare the effects ofself-compassion with those of trait self-esteem and narcissism.
People who treat themselves in an understanding, kind, and compassionate manner should feel better about themselves than those
who are more self-critical and, thus, should score higher in selfesteem. Indeed, previous research shows that self-compassion correlates moderately with self-esteem (Neff, 2003b). However, selfcompassion should involve more than positive self-evaluations orhigh self-esteem per se, reflecting a kinder and gentler approach toproblematic situations, and we should find that self-compassion
relates to various psychological outcomes in a fashion distinct
from self-esteem. Along these lines, Neff (2003b) showed that,even with self-esteem scores partialed out, self-compassion accounted for unique variance in depression, anxiety, and othervariables. Our goal was to extend her findings by exploring
whether self-compassion moderates emotions, thoughts, and behavioral inclinations to specific events differently than self-esteem.
Furthermore, because measures of self-esteem tend to correlatewith narcissism (Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996; Neff, 2003b;
Neff, Kirkpatrick, Rude, & Dejitterat, 2004), we thought it important to extend Neff’s (2003b) finding that self-compassion was
unrelated to narcissism by showing that the two constructs bear
distinct relationships to people’s reactions to particular situations.
Overall, we expected to find that self-compassion, unlike selfesteem or narcissism, would be related to lower negative emotions,more equanimous thoughts, and less reactivity in response to thenegative scenario events. Whereas self-compassion was predicted
to be associated with more balanced reactions to difficult situations(Neff, 2003b), previous research has shown that people who arehigh in trait self-esteem or narcissism sometimes react strongly toevents that threaten their ego or sense of control (Baumeister,Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs, 2003; Baumeister et al., 1996; Heatherton & Vohs, 2000).

MethodParticipantsParticipants were 123 students (70 men, 53 women, ages 18 –22)
from the psychology department subject pool who received required experimental participation credit in a course.

Measures
Self-compassion. The Self-Compassion Scale (Neff, 2003b),
described earlier, was administered.
Self-esteem. Participants completed Rosenberg’s (1965) SelfEsteem Inventory, the most widely used measure of trait selfesteem. This scale has good interitem reliability (␣ ⬎ .85) andstrong evidence of validity (see Blascovich & Tomaka, 1991).
Narcissism. The 40-item Narcissistic Personality Inventory(Raskin & Hall, 1979) assesses seven components of narcissism:
authority, exhibitionism, superiority, vanity, self-sufficiency, entitlement, and exploitativeness. It has high internal consistency (␣ ⫽.83) and acceptable validity (Raskin & Terry, 1988) and has beenused in hundreds of studies.
Scenarios. Participants read three hypothetical scenarios involving (a) getting a poor grade on an important test, (b) being

LEARY, TATE, ADAMS, ALLEN, AND HANCOCK

892

responsible for losing an athletic competition for their team, and(c) forgetting their part while performing on stage, causing a
musical or dramatic performance to grind to an embarrassing halt.
Participants were asked to imagine themselves in each situation as
vividly as possible and then answer questions about each one.
First, participants were asked “How good or bad would you feel
about what happened?” (1 ⫽ extremely bad, 12 ⫽ extremelygood). They then rated the degree to which they would experience
20 feelings that were selected to assess five emotions: sadness(sad, dejected, down, depressed), anxiety (nervous, tense, worried,
anxious), anger (angry, irritated, mad, hostile), embarrassment(embarrassed, humiliated, disgraced, ashamed), and feelings ofincompetence (incompetent, worthless, stupid, self-conscious).
Ratings were made on 7-point scales (1 ⫽ not at all, 4 ⫽ moderately, 7 ⫽ extremely).
Participants were then asked to indicate how likely they would
be to react in seven ways if they found themselves in the situation
described (1 ⫽ not at all, 2 ⫽ slightly, 3 ⫽ moderately, 4 ⫽ very,
5 ⫽ extremely): (a) remain relatively calm and unflustered, (b)overreact, (c) experience strong emotions but not get carried awaywith them, (d) have no emotional reaction whatsoever, (e) take thesituation in stride, (f) leave the situation quickly in order to deal
with my emotions, and (g) replay the situation in my mind for along time afterwards.
Finally, participants rated how likely they would be to think
each of seven thoughts (1 ⫽ not at all, 2 ⫽ slightly, 3 ⫽ moderately, 4 ⫽ very, 5 ⫽ extremely): (a) This is awful! (b) Everybody
goofs up now and then, (c) In the long run, this really doesn’t
matter, (d) I am such a loser, (e) I wish I could die, (f) This is sortof funny, and (g) I should have expected this would happen.

Procedure
Participants completed the Self-Compassion Scale (Neff,
2003b), Self-Esteem Inventory (Rosenberg, 1965), and Narcissistic Personality Inventory (Raskin & Hall, 1979) during a mass
testing session. Several weeks later, they returned in small groups
to respond to the scenarios.

Results
Internal reliabilities were acceptable for self-compassion (␣ ⫽.73), self-esteem (␣ ⫽ .87), and narcissism (␣ ⫽ .82). The mean
self-compassion score was 18.2 (SD ⫽ 3.47), the mean self-esteem
score was 39.7 (SD ⫽ 6.62), and the mean for narcissism was 57.2
(SD ⫽ 6.34). The correlations among self-compassion, selfesteem, and narcissism were similar to those obtained by Neff
(2003b): self-compassion with self-esteem, r ⫽ .58; selfcompassion with narcissism, r ⫽ .18; and self-esteem with narcissism, r ⫽ .37 (all ps ⬍ .05). When both self-esteem and narcissism
were entered as predictors of self-compassion in a multiple regression analysis, self-esteem remained a significant predictor (sr2 ⫽.55, p ⬍ .001), but narcissism did not (sr2 ⫽ ⫺.03, p ⬎ .60).
The same two-stage strategy was used in all analyses. First,
Pearson correlations were calculated separately between selfcompassion, self-esteem, and narcissism on one hand, and theoutcome variables on the other. Then, a simultaneous multiple
regression analysis was conducted in which self-compassion, self-

esteem, and narcissism were entered and their semipartial correlations with the outcome variables examined.
The five emotion scales (sadness, anxiety, anger, embarrassment, negative self-feelings) each possessed acceptable reliability(␣s ⬎ .75), so items within each scale were summed. Principalaxis factor analyses conducted on these five emotion scores separately for each scenario revealed a single factor on which all fivescales loaded greater than .40. In light of this, the five emotion
scales were summed to create a single negative affect score foreach scenario. Table 2 presents both zero-order and semipartial
correlations between self-compassion, self-esteem, and narcissism
and reactions to the three scenarios. Inspection of the boldface
semipartial correlations in Table 2 reveals that self-compassion
accounted for significantly more unique variance in negative affectthan self-esteem or narcissism. Whereas self-compassion accounted for unique variance in emotion on all three scenarios,
self-esteem did not account for unique variance on any scenario,
and narcissism accounted for unique variance on only one.
A principal-axis factor analysis was performed on participants’reports of what they would think in each of the situations. This
analysis revealed four factors that accounted for 63.5% of thevariance and reflected catastrophizing (e.g., “This is awful”), personalizing (e.g., “I am such a loser”; “I wish I could die”),
equanimity (e.g., “Everybody goofs up now and then”; “In the longrun, this doesn’t really matter”), and humor (e.g., “This is sort offunny”). Items loading highly on each factor were summed (reliabilities for multi-item scales ranged from .67 to .79). As seen in
the third column of Table 2, only self-compassion predicted uniquevariance in catastrophizing (one scenario), personalizing (all three
scenarios), and equanimity (all three scenarios). In contrast, selfesteem predicted no unique variance in any of the thoughts, andnarcissism predicted only humor (one scenario).
Ratings of the seven behavioral reactions (e.g., I would remain
relatively calm and unflustered; I would overreact) were highly
correlated, with interitem reliabilities in excess of .70 for all three
scenarios. Thus, we reverse scored highly reactive statements andsummed the seven reactions to create an index of behavioral
equanimity. As seen in Table 2, self-compassion uniquely predicted behavioral equanimity for all three scenarios. In contrast,
narcissism predicted equanimity in only one scenario, and selfesteem predicted equanimity in none.

Discussion
Self-compassion displayed distinct patterns of associations withmost measures, patterns that mirrored those obtained in reactions
to real events in Study 1. Self-compassion uniquely predicted
emotional reactions to all three scenarios as well as thoughts thatreflected less catastrophizing, less personalizing, and greater equanimity. Self-compassion was also associated with less extreme
behavioral inclinations in response to the imagined events.
As noted, we should not be surprised that people who treat
themselves with understanding and kindness feel better about
themselves than people who treat themselves critically andharshly, and, as expected, the correlation between self-compassion
and self-esteem was high, replicating Neff (2003b). Even so,
self-compassion related to measures of emotional, cognitive, andbehavioral reactivity independently of self-esteem, and when selfcompassion and self-esteem were entered simultaneously into theSELF-COMPASSION

893

Table 2Comparative Effects of Self-Compassion, Self-Esteem, and Narcissism in Study 2
Failed important test

Lost game for team

Forgot part on stage

Variable

S-comp

S-est

Narciss

S-comp

S-est

Narciss

S-comp

S-est

Narciss

Total negative affect⫺.34**⫺.23**⫺.28**
⫺.06

⫺.18*
⫺.09

⫺.34**⫺.19*⫺.32**
⫺.12

⫺.15*
⫺.04

⫺.32**⫺.17*⫺.32**⫺.10⫺.28**⫺.18*⫺.25**⫺.20*⫺.42**⫺.28**
.46**
.40**
.11
.09
.40**
.28**

⫺.14
⫺.04
⫺.33**
.08
.23**
⫺.05
.07
⫺.04
.30**
.05

.06
.11
⫺.18*
⫺.08
.09
.03
.17*
.16
.20*
.10

⫺.19*
⫺.17
⫺.45**⫺.31**
.38**
.28**
.22**
.15
.43***
.31**

⫺.09
.03
⫺.34**
⫺.08
.27**
.03
.19
.01
.31**
.04

⫺.03
.00
⫺.17
⫺.05
.17
.09
.23*
.18*
.19**
.11

⫺.18
⫺.16
⫺.36**⫺.27**
.36**
.23**
.13
.08
.35**
.28**

⫺.08
.04
⫺.24**
.02
.30**
.06
.12
.00
.22**
⫺.07

⫺.07
⫺.05
⫺.23**
⫺.16
.26**
.16
.18*
.15
.33**
.28**

Thought
Catastrophizing
Personalizing
Equanimity
Humorous
Behavioral equanimity

Note. The upper number in each cell is the Pearson correlation. The lower number is the semipartial correlation with the influence of the other two
predictors removed. Significant semipartial correlations are presented in boldface type. S-comp ⫽ self-compassion; S-est ⫽ self-esteem; Narciss ⫽narcissism.
*p ⬍ .05. ** p ⬍ .01.

regression analyses, self-compassion accounted for unique variance in the outcome variables, whereas self-esteem did not. More
important, had we measured only self-esteem, we would haveundoubtedly concluded that all of these effects were because of
self-esteem, unaware that self-compassion may be the importantfactor at work. These data raise the possibility that many concomitants of trait self-esteem identified in previous research may be afunction of self-compassion rather than self-esteem. We return
later to a general discussion of similarities and differences between
self-compassion and self-esteem.

Study 3Thus far, we have seen that self-compassion predicts people’s
reactions to both real-life events (see Study 1) and hypotheticalsituations involving failure, loss, and humiliation (see Study 2).
We extended the findings of the first two studies in Study 3 byexamining low- and high-self-compassionate people’s reactions toan actual unpleasant interpersonal event, one in which they received ambivalent feedback from another individual.
Being negatively evaluated or rejected by other people is an
inherently aversive experience, resulting in negative emotions(such as hurt feelings, sadness, and anger), diminished self-esteem,
and a loss of perceived control (Leary, Koch, & Hechenbleikner,
2001; Williams & Zadro, 2005), and even ambivalent or neutral
evaluations from other people can be quite distressing (Leary,
Haupt, Strausser, & Chokel, 1998). Both the conceptualization ofself-compassion (Neff, 2003a) and our previous findings suggestthat self-compassion may buffer people against some of the distress that interpersonal ambivalence induces. People who treat
themselves kindly after receiving less positive reactions fromothers than they desire, recognize the universality of rejection in
the human experience, and hold their emotions in mindful awareness should find such episodes less distressing than those who are
low in self-compassion. They should also have less negative reactions toward those who do not evaluate them as they desire. In

Study 3, participants disclosed information about themselves toanother individual and then received either positive or neutral
feedback. Then, participants’ emotional reactions and judgmentsof the other person were assessed.
In light of the high correlation between self-compassion andtrait self-esteem, we were interested in examining whether selfcompassion and self-esteem differentially moderate reactions to
feedback. The results from Neff (2003b) and Study 2 suggested
that self-compassion has distinct effects from self-esteem, but wethought it was important to document that self-compassion andself-esteem moderate people’s reactions to an actual event indifferent ways. Furthermore, we were interested in examining thepossibility that self-compassion may moderate the relationshipbetween trait self-esteem and reactions to interpersonal feedback.
Previous research suggests that people with low self-esteem are
more reactive to the self-relevant implications of negative feedback than people with high self-esteem, whose positive self-views
and beliefs about their social acceptability help to buffer themagainst negative evaluations (Campbell & Lavallee, 1993). If so,then one may expect that being high in self-compassion would
provide a greater benefit to people who are low versus high inself-esteem because a self-compassionate orientation may allow
low-self-esteem people to maintain equanimity in the face of
unflattering evaluations.

MethodParticipants
Sixty-six undergraduate psychology students (36 men and 30
women, ages 18 –22) completed the Self-Compassion Scale (Neff,
2003b) and the Self-Esteem Inventory (Rosenberg, 1965) in a mass
testing session. The mean self-compassion score was 19.5 (SD ⫽3.48), and the mean self-esteem score was 39.8 (SD ⫽ 6.02).

894

LEARY, TATE, ADAMS, ALLEN, AND HANCOCK

Procedure
When participants arrived for the experiment several weeks
later, they were told that the study was investigating one-way
video interactions. They were led to believe that they would
introduce themselves on a video link that projected into anotherroom, where another participant (the “observer”) would ostensibly
watch and provide feedback about their introduction.
Video introduction. Participants were told to talk about themselves while facing a video camera for 3 min. To facilitate theirintroduction, they were given a list of topics used in previous
research using a similar paradigm (B. Pontari, personal communication, September 24, 2004)—the participant’s hometown, major,
likes and dislikes about college, hobbies, interests, future plans,
things in life that are personally important, and miscellaneous
information. Participants were told to continue talking until the
researcher returned. The researcher turned on the video camera,
which appeared to be connected by cables to the adjacent room,and left. After 3 min, the researcher returned, turned off the video
camera, and asked the participants to complete a questionnaire
about their introduction.
Feedback manipulation. The researcher left again and returned with an envelope ostensibly containing feedback from theobserver who had watched the participant’s introduction. This
feedback consisted of the observer’s ratings on six bipolar scales(socially unskilled–socially skilled, unfriendly–friendly, unlikable–
likable, cold–warm, unintelligent–intelligent, and immature–
mature), each of which was given on a 7-point scale (with 7 being
the most positive rating). Participants who were randomly assigned
to the positive-feedback condition received ratings of 5s, 6s, and7s, whereas participants in the neutral feedback condition received
ratings of 3s, 4s, and 5s.
Neutral feedback was used rather than negative feedback tominimize participants’ discomfort and because people typicallyview neutral feedback as negative (Leary et al., 1998). Pilot testing
confirmed that the neutral feedback was viewed significantly morenegatively than the positive feedback. In a pilot study, 12 participants were given either the positive- or the neutral feedback sheet
and rated the extent to which they would feel happy, angry, andgood about themselves if they received these ratings from anotherperson. Participants indicated that the neutral feedback would
make them feel less happy (Ms ⫽ 3.3 vs. 9.3), more angry (Ms ⫽7.7 vs. 3.5), and worse about themselves (Ms ⫽ 4.2 vs. 10.0) thanthe positive feedback (all ps ⬍ .001).
Final questionnaire. After viewing the feedback, participants
completed a questionnaire that assessed reactions to the feedback,state self-esteem, attributions for the feedback, and ratings of theobserver. First, participants rated the degree to which the feedback
was positive or negative (1 ⫽ very negative; 12 ⫽ very positive),
the extent to which their introduction gave the observer an accurate
understanding of them (1 ⫽ not at all; 12 ⫽ extremely), and how
much they thought the observer liked them (1 ⫽ not at all; 12 ⫽extremely).
Participants then rated themselves on 5-point emotion scales
that were designed to assess happiness (happy, cheerful, delighted,
pleased), sadness (down, depressed, sad, dejected), anger (irritated, annoyed, mad, angry), and anxiety (anxious, tense, uneasy,
nervous) ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely). Next,
participants rated the degree to which six factors may have caused

the observer’s reactions to them: (a) what I said about myself, (b)the other person’s mood, (c) the other person’s tendency to be an
accepting versus a rejecting person, (d) my own social skill andverbal ability, (e) my personality, and (f) the other person did not
get an accurate impression of what I am really like. Ratings weremade on 12-point scales with five equally spaced scale labels (nota reason, a small reason, a moderate reason, a big reason, themain reason). Finally, participants rated the degree to which they
thought they would like the observer (1 ⫽ not at all; 12 ⫽extremely). Participants were thoroughly debriefed about the procedure of the study. They were assured that they were not actuallyobserved and that the feedback they received had been created forthe experiment in advance.

Results
Data were analyzed with a series of three-step hierarchicalmultiple regression analyses. Main effects of self-compassion(zero centered), trait self-esteem (zero centered), and feedback
condition (dummy coded— 0, 1) were entered on Step 1, followedby the three two-way interactions on Step 2 and the three-way
interaction on Step 3. Significant interactions were decomposed by
testing simple slopes (Aiken & West, 1991), although we present
predicted condition means to facilitate descriptions of feedback
main effects. Data were examined for adherence to assumptions ofnormality, homoscedasticity, and outliers.

Feedback Manipulation Check
A main effect of condition on ratings of the feedback showedthat the feedback manipulation was successful. Participants who
received positive feedback rated the other person’s impressions as
significantly more positive (M ⫽ 9.9, SD ⫽ 0.99) than those who
received neutral feedback (M ⫽ 5.3, SD ⫽ 0.97), t(65) ⫽ 18.67,
sr2 ⫽ .85, p ⬍ .001. In addition, participants in the positivefeedback condition indicated that the observer liked them more(positive condition M ⫽ 7.8, SD ⫽ 1.48; neutral condition M ⫽4.3, SD ⫽ 1.32), t(65) ⫽ 10.40, sr2 ⫽ .62, p ⬍ .001.
Self-compassion moderated participants’ ratings of the feedback, however. The Feedback ⫻ Self-Compassion interaction,t(65) ⫽ ⫺1.99, sr2 ⫽ .01, p ⫽ .05, showed that participants highin self-compassion rated the neutral feedback as more positive thanparticipants low in self-compassion (b ⫽ .12), t(65) ⫽ 2.26, p ⫽.03. However, self-compassion was not related to ratings of thepositive feedback (b ⫽ ⫺.02), t(65) ⫽ ⫺0.41, p ⫽ .68. More
important, both low- and high-self-compassion participants perceived the neutral feedback as more negative than the positive
feedback ( p ⬍ .01).

Reactions to the Feedback
A main effect of feedback, t(64) ⫽ 6.36, sr2 ⫽ .39, p ⬍ .001, as
well as a three-way interaction of feedback, self-compassion, andself-esteem, t(64) ⫽ 2.29, sr2 ⫽ .05, p ⫽ .03, were obtained on
answers to the question “To what extent did your introduction givethe other person an accurate understanding of who you are as aperson?” For participants low in self-esteem, the Feedback ⫻Self-Compassion simple interaction showed that higher selfcompassion was associated with lower accuracy ratings of neutral

SELF-COMPASSION

895

feedback but higher accuracy ratings of positive feedback (seeFigure 1). Put differently, participants who were low in bothself-compassion and self-esteem essentially accepted the neutral
feedback, but participants who were low in self-esteem but high inself-compassion questioned it. In contrast, in the positive-feedback
condition, the highest accuracy ratings were made by participants
with low self-esteem and high self-compassion. Together, thesetwo patterns suggest that participants with low self-esteem cutthemselves more slack—in terms of accepting the validity ofpositive feedback and recognizing that neutral feedback may not
be accurate—when they were high in self-compassion.

Emotional Reactions
The emotion measures had adequate internal consistency: anger,␣ ⫽ .80; anxiety, ␣ ⫽ .89; sadness, ␣ ⫽ .89. A factor analysis
conducted on the emotion scores revealed a single factor (eigenvalue ⫽ 2.10) that accounted for 69.6% of the variance, so thethree scores were summed to create a measure of negative affect(␣ ⫽ .78). This analysis revealed a main effect of self-compassion(but not self-esteem), t(65) ⫽ ⫺3.02, sr2 ⫽ .10, p ⫽ .01, and a
Self-Compassion ⫻ Self-Esteem interaction, t(64) ⫽ 2.52, sr2 ⫽.09, p ⫽ .01, that were qualified by a significant interaction ofFeedback ⫻ Self-Compassion ⫻ Self-Esteem, t(63) ⫽ 2.09, sr2 ⫽.05, p ⫽ .04. As seen in Figure 2, among participants who received
positive feedback, the Self-Compassion ⫻ Self-Esteem simple
interaction was not significant ( p ⬎ .20). However, in the neutral
feedback condition, a strong simple interaction emerged. The
greatest negative affect was reported by participants who scored
low in both self-compassion and self-esteem. However, negative
affect was lower with increasing self-compassion. As a result, thelowest negative affect was expressed by participants with low
self-esteem and high self-compassion.

Figure 2. Negative affect. Solid xs ⫽ neutral/high (Hi) self-esteem (SE);solid triangles ⫽ positive/high (Hi) SE; solid squares ⫽ positive/low (Lo)SE; solid squares ⫽ neutral/low SE.

participants high in self-compassion were more similar. Ratings on
this item were significantly different between positive and neutral
conditions at 1 standard deviation below the self-compassion mean
(B ⫽ 2.69), t(65) ⫽ 3.45, p ⫽ .001, but not at 1 standard deviation
above the self-compassion mean ( p ⬎ .20). Participants low in
self-compassion were the most likely to make what appeared to be
defensive attributions, indicating that positive feedback, but not
negative feedback, was caused by their own personality.
A significant Feedback ⫻ Self-Esteem interaction was also
obtained for this item, but the pattern was precisely opposite to thatof the Self-Compassion ⫻ Feedback effect just described, t(65) ⫽2.39, sr2 ⫽ .07, p ⫽ .02. Specifically, participants high in selfesteem indicated that positive feedback reflected their personality
more and that neutral feedback reflected their personality less (seeAttributions for Feedback
Self-compassion was also related to participants’ attributions forthe other person’s evaluations. A Feedback ⫻ Self-Compassion
Condition interaction was obtained for the degree to which participants attributed the feedback they received to their own personality, t(65) ⫽ ⫺2.14, sr2 ⫽ .05, p ⫽ .04. As seen in Figure 3a,participants who were low in self-compassion gave quite different
ratings for positive versus neutral feedback, whereas the ratings for

Figure 1. Accuracy of other person’s understanding. Solid triangles ⫽positive/low (Lo) self-esteem (SE); solid xs ⫽ positive/high (Hi) SE; solid
squares ⫽ neutral/high SE; solid diamonds ⫽ neutral/low SE.

Figure 3. Attributions to “My personality” for (a) self-compassion and(b) self-esteem. Solid squares ⫽ positive feedback; solid diamonds ⫽neutral feedback.

LEARY, TATE, ADAMS, ALLEN, AND HANCOCK

896

Figure 3b). Ratings on this item were significantly different between positive- and neutral feedback conditions at 1 standard
deviation above the self-esteem mean (B ⫽ 1.66), t(65) ⫽ 2.13,
p ⫽ .04, but not at 1 standard deviation below the mean ofself-esteem ( p ⬎ .20).
Main effects of both self-compassion and self-esteem emerged
for the extent to which participants attributed the other person’s
evaluation to what they said about themselves in their video
introduction, but the effects were in opposite directions. Selfesteem was inversely related to attributions to what they said about
themselves, t(65) ⫽ ⫺2.12, sr2 ⫽ .06, p ⫽ .04, whereas selfcompassion was positively related to these attributions, t(65) ⫽1.71, sr2 ⫽ .04, p ⫽ .09. No significant effects were obtained on
the other attribution items.

Ratings of the Observer
Participants who received positive feedback understandably indicated that they liked the observer more (M ⫽ 8.2, SD ⫽ 1.24)
than participants who received neutral feedback (M ⫽ 5.3, SD ⫽2.03), t(65) ⫽ 7.44, sr2 ⫽ .45, p ⬍ .001. In addition, participants
high in self-compassion indicated that they liked the observer morethan those lower in self-compassion, t(65) ⫽ 2.13, sr2 ⫽ .04, p ⫽.04, and a marginal Self-Compassion ⫻ Feedback Condition interaction suggests that this effect was stronger in the neutral
feedback condition, t(65) ⫽ ⫺1.70, sr2 ⫽ .002, p ⬍ .10. Tests ofsimple slopes revealed that self-compassion was associated withgreater liking for the observer in the neutral (B ⫽ .28), t(64) ⫽3.39, p ⫽ .001, but not positive-feedback condition (B ⫽ .04),
t(64) ⫽ 0.56, p ⫽ .58. Furthermore, the relationship between
feedback and ratings of liking was strongest for participants low in
self-compassion (B ⫽ 3.80), t(64) ⫽ 7.07, p ⬍ .001. When rating
how much they liked the observer, participants higher in selfcompassion seem to have been less influenced by the rater’sevaluation of them than participants lower in self-compassion.

Discussion
Self-compassion was related to participants’ perceptions of the
feedback, attributions, emotional reactions, and ratings of otherpeople. Not surprisingly, self-compassion moderated reactions primarily to the neutral feedback. Furthermore, participants low in
self-compassion reacted more differently to neutral than to positive
evaluations than participants high in self-compassion. For example, participants low in self-compassion attributed positive feedback more to themselves but neutral feedback less to themselves,
but people high in self-compassion reacted more similarly topositive and neutral feedback. These patterns suggest not only that
self-compassion buffers people against the psychological impact
of negative events but also that it more generally attenuates reactions to both positive and negative events. This effect may occur
because two of the three components of self-compassion—common humanity and mindful acceptance— have implications
for how people respond to good fortune as well as to bad. Recognizing that success, like failure, is experienced by everyone, people
who are high in self-compassion may be less affected by it.
Similarly, maintaining a degree of mindful psychological distancefrom one’s emotions may temper emotional reactions to success,interpersonal acceptance, and other positive events.

This study provided further evidence for the discriminant validity of self-compassion vis-à-vis trait self-esteem, as different patterns were obtained for self-compassion and self-esteem. Selfcompassion, but not self-esteem, was associated with lower
negative affect, and high self-esteem was associated with stronger
differential reactions to positive versus neutral feedback. Whereas
participants higher in self-esteem were less likely to attributeneutral feedback to themselves than those lower in self-esteem,
self-compassion was associated with indicating that feedback wascaused by one’s own personality. As suggested earlier, high selfesteem may be associated with defensive reactions to neutral
feedback, whereas high self-compassion is not. Rather than denying that they may have caused negative life outcomes, selfcompassionate people may assume some level of personal responsibility. However, even when assuming personal responsibility for
negative events, self-compassionate people do not seem to ruminate about possible negative implications, as evidenced by lower
negative affect.
In addition, in some cases, self-compassion moderated reactions
to feedback differently, depending on whether participants werehigh or low in self-esteem. Participants who were low in bothself-esteem and self-compassion had the most negative reactions to
the neutral feedback, but high self-compassion attenuated theseeffects. Among participants with low self-esteem who received
neutral feedback, those with higher self-compassion were lessupset and more accepting of the feedback. Among participants
with low self-esteem, higher levels of self-compassion were also
associated with lower negative affect. Self-compassion may bebeneficial when coping with negative interpersonal events, and aself-compassionate mindset may be particularly important for people with low self-esteem.

Study 4
The first three studies showed clearly that self-compassionate
people react with greater equanimity to difficult situations thanpeople who are lower in self-compassion. Neff’s (2003b) conceptualization of self-compassion suggests that these effects arise
from differences in how low- versus high-self-compassion individuals think about negative events with respect to self-kindness,
mindfulness, and common humanity. Specifically, selfcompassionate people are assumed to be able to maintain emotional equanimity while seeing themselves accurately (without
either self-enhancing or self-deprecating) because they compassionately recognize their own imperfect humanity.
However, at least two other explanations may be offered. First,
self-compassionate people may treat themselves well because they
are more competent than people low in self-compassion (either
more capable in general or with respect to solving problems thatarise). Thus, they may react less strongly to negative events
because they know that they are good at dealing with whatever
happens. If individual differences in self-compassion spring fromreal behavioral differences rather than (or in addition to) private
self-attitudes, then we should find that high-self-compassion individuals are rated more positively than low-self-compassion individuals by outside observers. However, finding that high-selfcompassion participants rate themselves more positively thanobservers do would suggest that self-compassion lies in the mindof the individual rather than in his or her objective actions and that

SELF-COMPASSION

self-compassionate people display a self-enhancing bias similar tothat shown by people who are high in self-esteem (Robins & Beer,
2001).
A second possibility is that people who score high in selfcompassion have a generalized positive orientation toward everyone. Thus, self-compassion may reflect a broad, positive interpersonal orientation that happens to include the individual him- or
herself. If people high in self-compassion are globally positive
rather than specifically compassionate toward themselves, then weshould find that they rate others more positively than people low in
self-compassion do.
To test these two explanations, participants were videotaped
while performing an awkward and mildly embarrassing task. Theneach videotape was rated either by the participant him- or herself
or by another participant. In this way, we were able to compare thethoughts and feelings of low- and high-self-compassion individuals while evaluating themselves versus other people. Finding thatparticipants high in self-compassion are judged more positively byobservers than participants low in self-compassion would suggestthat self-compassionate people react with greater equanimity because they are better able to handle difficult situations that arise.
However, if observers rate low- and high-self-compassion participants similarly, then it would seem that self-compassion does not
emerge from actual behavioral differences. Furthermore, findingthat self-compassionate participants rate other people’s performances more positively than low-self-compassionate participants
do would suggest that self-compassion may involve a broad positive, optimistic, or compassionate orientation rather than a specific positive self-focused attitude.
In addition to testing differences in how low- and high-selfcompassion people rate themselves versus others, in Study 4, we
also examined participants’ emotional comfort in a potentiallyawkward and embarrassing situation. As noted, emotional equanimity is considered a primary feature of self-compassion, so
assessing emotional upset or calm in a real situation provides anadditional test of Neff’s (2003b) conceptualization of selfcompassion.

MethodParticipantsParticipants were 48 male and 54 female participants, ages
18 –21, from the introductory psychology subject pool who received required experimental participation credit for their course.

Procedure
Participants completed the Self-Compassion Scale (Neff,
2003b) in a mass testing session (M ⫽ 19.7, SD ⫽ 3.01, ␣ ⫽ .78).
Several weeks later, participants were tested individually by one ofthree female researchers. The researcher seated the participant at adesk in a lab room and explained that the participant would bevideotaped while performing a task and then would watch andevaluate either his or her own videotaped performance or thevideotape made by a previous participant. The informed consent
form asked for the participant’s permission to show his or her
videotape to other participants if needed.

897

The researcher started a video camera, situated 6 feet (1.83 m)from the participant, as well as an audiotape containing the instructions and left the room. The audiotape instructed the participant to look into the camera and make up a children’s story thatbegan “Once upon a time, there was a little bear. . . . ” After aminute had passed, the researcher returned and randomly assigned
the participant to watch either the videotape he or she had justmade or a videotape made previously by another participant of hisor her own gender. One third of the participants (n ⫽ 34) rated
their own videotape. The other two thirds of the participants also
rated one of these 34 videotapes, subject to the constraint that eachtape was rated by both a low- and a high-self-compassion individual (based on a median split, Mdn ⫽ 19) of the same gender as the
person who recorded the tape. Thus, over the course of the study,
each of the 34 target videotapes was rated three times— by theparticipant who had made the tape, by a low-self-compassionate
participant, and by a high-self-compassionate participant.
First, participants rated how they (if rating their own tape) or theother person (if rating another participant’s tape) appeared on thevideotape on nine adjectives—awkward, competent, confident,
attractive, nervous, foolish, creative, likable, and reasonable. Ratings were made on 7-point scales with three scale labels (1 ⫽ notat all, 4 ⫽ moderately, 7 ⫽ extremely). Participants also rated how
they felt while watching the videotape on eight emotions—relaxed, embarrassed, happy, irritable, sad, nervous, proud, andpeaceful— on 7-point scales (1 ⫽ not at all, 4 ⫽ moderately, 7 ⫽extremely). Finally, they provided their overall evaluation of theirown or the other person’s story on a 12-point scale with fiveequally spaced labels (very bad, somewhat bad, neither bad nor
good, somewhat good, and very good) and rated how good or badthey felt while watching the videotape (1 ⫽ very bad, 12 ⫽ verygood). After completing the final questionnaire, participants were
debriefed and dismissed.

Results
Because each of the 34 targets’ videotapes was rated threetimes— by the participant him- or herself, by a low-selfcompassionate participant, and by a high self-compassionate participant—analyses were conducted in a manner that accounted forthe nonindependence of the data. Repeated measures multiple
regression analyses were conducted using targets’ self-compassion
scores, rater type (self, low-self-compassion other, high-selfcompassion other), and their interaction as predictors. In thisanalysis, self-compassion was treated as a continuous betweensubjects predictor (zero centered), and rater was treated as acategorical within-subjects predictor with three levels (dummy
coded). This analysis was conducted using the general linear
model procedure on SPSS and is equivalent to a between-within
regression analysis that treated rater as a within-subjects factor(Pedhazur, 1997). Significant interactions were decomposed via
tests of simple slopes.

Ratings of Performance on the Task
A multiple regression analysis performed on participants’ ratings of the story revealed a significant Self-Compassion ⫻ Rater
interaction, F(2, 124) ⫽ 2.27, p ⬍ .05. As can be seen in Figure 4,
tests of simple slopes revealed that target self-compassion was

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related to ratings of the story when participants rated themselves(B ⫽ 0.34), t(33) ⫽ 2.32, p ⬍ .03, but was unrelated to ratings
made by either low- or high-self-compassionate observers ( ps ⬎.40). In addition, differences between self-ratings and observer
ratings emerged only when targets were low in self-compassion.
Given that other low- and high-self-compassionate raters detected
no difference in the quality of the stories told by low- and highself-compassion targets, it seems that low-self-compassion targets
rated their own performance unduly harshly.
The internal reliability of the ratings of the target (e.g., awkward, competent, confident) was high (Cronbach’s ␣ ⬎ .70), so wesummed the nine items to create an overall evaluation of the target(after reverse scoring negatively valenced items). Analyses revealed a significant two-way interaction that was virtually identical to that obtained on ratings of the story, F(4, 124) ⫽ 2.62, p ⬍.04, sr2 ⫽ .09. As with ratings of the story (see Figure 4), tests ofsimple slopes revealed that self-compassion was unrelated to either
low- or high-self-compassion observers’ evaluations of the target( ps ⬎ .85). However, when targets rated themselves, selfcompassion was related to the positivity of these self-ratings (B ⫽0.17), t(33) ⫽ 2.69, p ⬍ .01.

Emotional Reactions
Separate measures of positive and negative emotion were calculated by summing the relevant emotion ratings. Analysis of thesum of the four positive emotions (relaxed, happy, proud, peaceful;all ␣s ⬎ .70) revealed a two-way Self-Compassion ⫻ Rater
interaction, F(1, 31) ⫽ 3.70, p ⬍ .06. As seen in Figure 5, target
self-compassion was related to positive emotions only when participants watched themselves (B ⫽ .18), t(33) ⫽ 2.43, p ⬍ .05.
Effects for low- and high-self-compassion observers were notsignificant ( ps ⬎ .80). Analysis of the sum of the negative emotions (embarrassed, irritable, sad, nervous; all ␣s ⬎ .70) revealed
only a main effect of target self-compassion, showing that selfcompassion was inversely related to negative emotion, F(1, 31) ⫽7.12, p ⬍ .01, sr2 ⫽ .18. This finding suggests that raters felt
greater negative affect watching low-self-compassion targets, possibly because low-self-compassion targets subtly communicatedtheir own discomfort to the raters.
Participants’ overall ratings of how good versus bad they felt
while watching the videotape revealed a significant Target SelfCompassion ⫻ Rater interaction, F(2, 60) ⫽ 3.18, p ⬍ .05, sr2 ⫽.09. When participants watched themselves, their self-compassion

Figure 4. Rating of story. Solid squares ⫽ low-self-compassion (SC)rater; solid diamonds ⫽ self-rating; solid triangles ⫽ high-self-compassion
rater.

Figure 5. Positive emotion. Solid diamonds ⫽ self-rating; solid triangles ⫽ high-self-compassion (SC) rater; solid squares ⫽ low-selfcompassion rater.

scores were positively related to how good they felt (B ⫽ .36),
t(33) ⫽ 2.58, p ⬍ .02. However, when participants rated anotherindividual, target self-compassion scores did not predict ratings for
either low- or high-self-compassionate individuals (Bs ⫽ ⫺.07 and.04, ps ⬎ .50).

Discussion
The results of Study 4 provide five general conclusions about
the nature of self-compassion. First, as expected, participants’reactions to their own videotaped performances differed as afunction of self-compassion. Participants who were low in selfcompassion evaluated their answers less favorably and rated theirpersonal characteristics (as observed on the videotape) less positively. They also felt worse while watching the tape compared withparticipants who were high in self-compassion.
Second, these effects were primarily attributed to the fact that
low-self-compassionate participants undervalued their performances relative to observers. Whereas self-compassionate participants’ ratings were similar to observers’ ratings, low-selfcompassionate participants rated themselves significantly lesspositively than the observers did. This pattern is notably different
than that obtained in previous studies of trait self-esteem, which
generally show that high self-esteem is associated with inflated
evaluations of one’s performance and characteristics relative toobservers’ ratings (Robins & Beer, 2001). In contrast to the selfenhancing tendencies of people who are high in self-esteem, those
who are high in self-compassion appear to judge themselves asothers do.
Third, the differences in low- versus high-self-compassionate
participants’ self-evaluations and emotional reactions did not appear to be based on real differences in their performances. Although low-self-compassionate targets rated their performancesless positively than high-self-compassionate targets did, observers
did not judge low- and high-self-compassionate targets differently.
This pattern suggests that the highly self-compassionate participants had more accurate perceptions of themselves than less selfcompassionate participants, although the possibility exists that lessself-compassionate participants were aware of negative aspects of
their behavior or characteristics that were not obvious to observers.
Fourth, we saw no evidence to suggest that self-compassion
predicted participants’ ratings of other people. Low- and high-selfcompassion observers did not differ in their evaluations of targets’SELF-COMPASSION

answers or personal characteristics. This finding does not bear on
the issue of whether self-compassionate people treat others morecompassionately (see Neff, 2003a; Salzberg, 1997) but does suggest that they do not make generally more positive evaluations ofothers.
Finally, the results showed that self-compassion predicted positive affect when participants watched their own videotape but notwhen they watched others’ tapes. This finding supports Neff’s(2003b) hypothesis that self-compassion is related to equanimity inunpleasant, stressful, and awkward situations. It also provides
additional evidence that self-compassion is distinct from moregeneral feelings of compassion toward others.

Study 5
The first four studies documented a number of psychologicalconcomitants of trait self-compassion and showed that selfcompassion bears a distinctly different relationship to thought,
behavior, and emotion than do self-esteem and narcissism. In lightof the findings from the four previous studies, the purpose of Study
5 was threefold. First, Study 5 was designed to examine how
self-compassion moderates people’s reactions to remembered life
events. Studies 1, 3, and 4 documented the relationship between
self-compassion and contemporaneous reactions to immediate
events, and Study 2 examined how low- versus high-selfcompassionate individuals respond to hypothetical situations. In
Study 5, participants recalled a previous failure, rejection, or loss
that made them feel badly about themselves and answered questions about it.
The second purpose of Study 5 was to determine whether aself-compassionate perspective could be experimentally induced.
To induce self-compassion, some participants responded in writing
to prompts that were designed to lead them to think about thenegative event in ways that tapped into the three components ofself-compassion identified by Neff (2003a)—self-kindness, common humanity, and mindful acceptance.
Third, Study 5 compared the effects of this self-compassion
induction with a self-esteem induction. Studies 2 and 3 showed
that, at the trait level, self-compassion and self-esteem have distinct relationships to various outcomes. The question examined
here was whether transitory inductions of state self-compassion
versus state self-esteem would reveal similar differences. Thus,
whereas some participants responded in writing to self-compassion
prompts, others responded to prompts that were designed to protect
or bolster their self-esteem—reminding them of their positive
characteristics, leading them to explain the negative event in a waythat lowered their personal responsibility for it, and asking them toexplain why the event does not reflect on them personally. These
three prompts were based on research dealing with the tactics thatpeople use to protect their self-esteem, such as self-affirmation,
self-serving attributions, and egotistical reframing (see Blaine &Crocker, 1993; Greenwald, 1980; Steele, 1988; Taylor & Brown,1988), as well as interventions designed to raise people’s selfesteem in clinical settings (see Mruk, 1995). A writing-only condition was also included in the design to control for the possibility
that merely writing about negative events in a self-disclosing
manner may reduce negative emotions (Pennebaker, Colder, &Sharp, 1990). We predicted not only that participants scoring low
versus high in trait self-compassion would react differently to the899

remembered event (with self-compassionate people responding
more positively) but also that the induction of state selfcompassion would attenuate negative reactions to the event compared with the self-esteem induction and control conditions.

MethodParticipantsParticipants were 54 male and 61 female undergraduate students, ages 17–22, from the psychology subject pool. They received required experimental participation credit for their participation. Experimental sessions were conducted by one of threefemale researchers.

ProcedureAt the beginning of the semester, participants completed the
Self-Compassion Scale (Neff, 2003b) and Rosenberg Self-Esteem
Inventory (Rosenberg, 1965), described earlier. Several weeks
later, participants reported for the experiment, where they were
tested individually. Initial instructions stated that participants
would write about a negative event from their past and answer
questions about it. After signing an informed consent form, participants were asked to “. . . think about a negative event that you
experienced in high school or college that made you feel badly
about yourself—something that involved failure, humiliation, or
rejection.”
Participants were asked to describe the event and then provide
details regarding what led up to the event, who was present,
precisely what happened, and how they felt and behaved at thetime. After writing about the event, participants were randomly
assigned to one of four experimental conditions (a) selfcompassion induction (n ⫽ 29), (b) self-esteem induction (n ⫽31), (c) writing control (n ⫽ 28), or (d) true control (n ⫽ 27).
Self-compassion induction. Participants in the selfcompassion condition responded to three prompts that were designed to lead them to think about the event in a selfcompassionate manner (see Neff, 2003a). The first prompt,
designed to focus on the common humanity element of selfcompassion, asked participants to list ways in which other people
also experience similar events. The second prompt asked participants to write a paragraph expressing understanding, kindness, andconcern to themselves in the same way that they might express
concern to a friend who had undergone the experience, thereby
focusing on the self-kindness component of self-compassion. To
induce a mindful perspective on the event, the third prompt instructed participants to describe their feelings about the event in an
objective and unemotional fashion.
Self-esteem induction. Participants in the self-esteem condition responded to three prompts geared toward leading them to feel
good about themselves. The first item prompted them to “write
down your positive characteristics—indications that you are competent and valuable.” The second prompt asked participants towrite a paragraph explaining how what had happened was notentirely their fault and to interpret the event in a way that madethem feel better about themselves. The third prompt instructed
them to describe “why the event does not really indicate anything
about the kind of person you are.”LEARY, TATE, ADAMS, ALLEN, AND HANCOCK

900

Writing control condition. The writing control condition was
included to control for the fact that merely writing about negative
events can change how people feel. The instructions were modeled
after those used in previous studies on the effects of self-disclosureon emotion (Pennebaker et al., 1990). Participants were instructed
to “really let go” and explore their deepest emotions as they wrote
about the event.
Control condition. After describing the negative event andtheir feelings at the time, participants in the control condition
completed the dependent measures.
Dependent measures. After completing one of the four conditions, participants rated how they felt on 16 items that wereselected to assess four emotions: happiness (happy, cheerful, delighted, pleased), sadness (down, depressed, sad, dejected), anger(irritated, annoyed, mad, angry), and anxiety (anxious, tense,
uneasy, nervous). Participants rated themselves on each adjective
on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 7 (extremely).
Participants then rated the degree to which the event theydescribed was caused by (a) other people, (b) something they did,(c) bad luck, and (d) the kind of person they are (their personality,
abilities, attitudes, character, and so on); they also indicated how
much the event was their fault. Each question was answered on a
12-point scale with five scale labels (not at all, slightly, moderately, very, completely). Participants also rated the event theydescribed on a 12-point scale ranging from 1 (very good) to 12(very bad), and, to directly assess the effect of the manipulation on
perceptions of common humanity, participants answered the question, “Overall, how similar to or different from most other people
are you?” ranging from 1 (very different) to 12 (very similar).

Results
Trait self-compassion scores (M ⫽ 18.46, SD ⫽ 3.51) and trait
self-esteem scores (M ⫽ 39.92, SD ⫽ 6.20) were obtained for eachparticipant. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient revealed acceptable reliability for both the Self-Compassion Scale (␣ ⫽ .81) and the
Self-Esteem Scale (␣ ⫽ .87). As before, self-compassion correlated with trait self-esteem (r ⫽ .56, p ⬍ .01). To eliminate theconfounding effects of trait self-esteem, the effects of trait selfesteem were partialed out on all analyses. Specifically, we conducted hierarchical multiple regression analyses in which trait
self-esteem was entered on Step 1, followed by experimental
condition (dummy coded via three dummy variables), selfcompassion (zero centered), and the Condition ⫻ Self-Compassioninteraction.
Because participants chose their own negative event, the possibility exists that the events chosen by low- versus high-selfcompassion participants differed in some systematic way. However, analyses revealed no effects of self-compassion, theexperimental manipulation, or their interaction on ratings of how“bad” the event was ( ps ⬎ .20).

happiness). After partialing out trait self-esteem (which accounted
for 7.7% of the variance), the regression analysis revealed only amain effect of the experimental manipulation on this variable, F(3,110) ⫽ 2.77, p ⬍ .05, sr2 ⫽ .065. Post hoc tests revealed thatparticipants in the self-compassion condition (M ⫽ 46.5) reported
significantly lower negative affect than participants in the selfesteem (M ⫽ 54.0), disclosure (M ⫽ 53.5), or control (M ⫽ 58.6)
conditions ( ps ⬍ .05), which did not differ from each other.

Attributions and Ratings
Only a main effect of the experimental manipulation was obtained on how much participants thought that the negative event
was caused by the kind of person they were, F(3, 110) ⫽ 3.11, p ⬍.05, sr2 ⫽ .08. Participants in the self-compassion condition (M ⫽6.9) thought that the negative event was caused more by the kindof person they were than participants in the self-esteem (M ⫽ 4.4),
self-disclosure (M ⫽ 5.8), and control conditions (M ⫽ 5.5; ps ⬍.05), which did not differ significantly from each other ( ps ⬎ .05).
Neither experimental condition nor trait self-compassion wererelated to participants’ ratings of how much the event was causedby other people, by something they did, or by bad luck, or on
ratings of how much the event was their fault.
A main effect of condition was obtained on participants’ ratingsof how similar to most other people they were, F(3, 110) ⫽ 3.17,
p ⬍ .05, sr2 ⫽ .08, that was qualified by a significant Condition ⫻Trait Self-Compassion interaction, F(3, 106) ⫽ 2.77, p ⬍ .05,
sr2 ⫽ .07. The main effect showed that participants in the selfcompassion condition (M ⫽ 7.8) thought that they were significantly more similar to other people than participants in the selfdisclosure (M ⫽ 6.0) or control conditions (M ⫽ 6.7; ps ⬍ .05).
The Condition ⫻ Self-Compassion interaction is shown in Figure
6. Tests of simple slopes revealed that the regression line for the
self-compassion condition significantly differed from zero (B ⫽⫺0.34), t(106) ⫽ 2.01, p ⬍ .05, whereas the slopes for the
self-esteem, writing, and control conditions did not. The patternsuggests that the self-compassion induction markedly increased
perceptions of similarity for participants who were low in trait
self-compassion.

Emotions
The four items measuring each emotion were summed to provide measures of anger (␣ ⫽ .92), sadness (␣ ⫽ .90), anxiety (␣ ⫽.84), and happiness (␣ ⫽ .86). Because a principal-axis factor
analysis revealed that these four scores formed a single factor,
these four emotion measures were summed (after reverse scoring

Figure 6. Rating of similarity to others. The regression line for the
self-compassion induction significantly differs from zero, but the slopes forthe self-esteem, writing, and control conditions do not. Solid squares ⫽self-esteem condition; xs ⫽ control condition; solid diamonds ⫽ selfcompassion condition; solid triangles ⫽ writing condition.

SELF-COMPASSION

Discussion
In Study 5, we successfully induced state self-compassion byleading participants to think about personally relevant events interms of self-kindness, common humanity, and mindful acceptance(Neff, 2003a, 2003b). Participants in the self-compassion condition reported lower negative affect than those in any other condition. They also indicated that the event was more likely to becaused by the kind of person they were than participants in otherconditions.
The latter finding is intriguing in that the self-compassion condition led participants to report less negative affect even as they
acknowledged that their personal characteristics played a largerrole in causing the negative event in the first place. To follow up
on this finding, we calculated within-cell correlations between
personal attributions and the emotion composite for each experimental condition. In the control condition, attributing the event to“the kind of person you are” correlated positively with negative
emotions (r ⫽ .18, p ⬍ .05), but in the self-compassion condition,
the correlation between taking responsibility and negative emotion
was virtually zero (r ⫽ ⫺.03). Although only suggestive, thesefindings indicate that inducing self-compassion may decouple therelationship between taking responsibility and experiencing negative affect. The self-compassion induction allowed participants toacknowledge that they were the kind of people who made mistakes, yet they did not feel badly about something that is a common
experience. As a result, they were less defensive and distressed, as
shown by the lower ratings of negative emotions. This pattern may
alleviate the concern that self-compassion could lead to complacency or shirking of responsibility (Neff, 2003a). Apparently,
self-compassion does not undermine people’s willingness to accept responsibility for their actions and, in fact, may promote it.
This possibility deserves future research attention.
For participants who were low in self-compassion, the selfcompassion induction increased perceptions of similarity to otherpeople. However, people who were high in self-compassion were
not affected by the self-compassion induction on this measure.
Thus, the self-compassion induction seemed to be particularly
effective (especially in increasing perceptions of common humanity) for people who were lower in self-compassion.
As expected, the self-compassion and self-esteem manipulations
had different effects on participants’ reactions. As noted, participants in the self-compassion induction condition expressed lower
negative emotions than those in the self-esteem induction condition, and they also believed that they were more similar to otherpeople. Finally, as noted, participants in the self-compassion condition rated their character or personality as playing a greater rolein the negative event than participants in the self-esteem condition.
Given the multifaceted nature of the experimental manipulation,
we cannot with any certainty identify the key element that createdthese differences. However, one possibility may involve the factthat the self-compassion and self-esteem conditions differed in the
degree to which they encouraged participants to focus on themselves. Whereas the self-esteem condition focused participants on
their positive characteristics and on thinking about why the negative event did not reflect on them, the self-compassion condition
implicitly led participants to accept the negative event but then tocounteract its negative effects via self-kindness, common humanity, and mindful acceptance. Even though the prompts in the901

self-esteem condition may have affirmed participants’ positive
self-images, they nonetheless kept the participants focused onthemselves instead of widening their perspective to include otherpeople, which may explain why the self-esteem induction did notyield the same benefits as self-compassion.

General Discussion
These five studies show that self-compassion is an important
construct that moderates reactions to distressing situations involving failure, rejection, embarrassment, and other negative events.
Self-compassion was associated with lower negative emotions in
the face of real, remembered, and imagined events and withpatterns of thoughts that generally facilitate people’s ability tocope with negative events. Particularly interesting was the willingness of self-compassionate people to accept responsibility for
their role in negative events. Participants high in self-compassion
were more likely to believe that their own personality resulted inreceiving a mediocre evaluation (see Study 3) and to attribute thecause of negative events to the kind of person they are (see Study5). Even so, they were less likely to ruminate about unpleasantevaluations (see Study 3) or experience negative affect whenconfronted with their mistakes (see Study 5). Together, thesefindings suggest that self-compassionate people more readily accept undesirable aspects of their character and behavior thanpeople low in self-compassion without obsessing about them,
becoming defensive, or feeling badly.
Clearly, self-compassion buffers people against the impact ofnegative events, but why? The present studies suggest three possible processes that may underlie differences between low- andhigh-self-compassion individuals. First, Study 4 showed not onlythat highly self-compassionate people judged themselves lessharshly than those low in self-compassion but also that theirself-evaluations and emotional reactions were based more on theiractual performance (as assessed by observers) than those of lessself-compassionate people, who judged their performances more
unfavorably than observers did. These results suggest that selfcompassionate people may be more accurate in their selfevaluations, possibly because their self-judgments are less tainted
by either catastrophizing self-criticism, on one hand, or defensive
self-enhancement, on the other. Additional research is needed to
examine this hypothesis directly.
Second, the results suggest that self-compassionate people’s
self-evaluations may not depend as strongly on their outcomes as
those of less self-compassionate people, presumably because they
respond in a kind and accepting manner toward themselves
whether things go well or badly. In contrast, people low in selfcompassion may feel good about themselves primarily when life
treats them well, for example, after they have succeeded or received positive feedback. If high self-compassion is associatedwith lower reactivity to external events, then we should find thatthe self-esteem of highly self-compassionate individuals is morestable over situations and time. Given that stable self-esteem isassociated with more adaptive responses to failure and rejection
than unstable self-esteem (Greenier et al., 1999; Kernis, Cornell,Sun, Berry, & Harlow, 1993), the question may be raised whether
the benefits of stable self-esteem stem from stability per se or fromthe fact that people with stable self-esteem tend to be high inself-compassion.

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Third, people high in self-compassion appear to cognize about
negative events in ways that reduce their impact. The present
studies showed that self-compassionate participants had more selfrelevant thoughts that reflected self-kindness, common humanity,and mindful acceptance.

Self-Compassion Versus Self-Esteem
As noted earlier, self-compassionate people should feel better
about themselves than low self-compassionates do, yet the highcorrelation between self-compassion and trait self-esteem raises
questions regarding the discriminant validity of these constructs(Neff, 2003a; Neff et al., 2004, 2005). The present research provided additional evidence that self-compassion is related tothoughts, feelings, and behavior differently than self-esteem. Selfcompassion, but not self-esteem, was uniquely related to lower
negative affect and, in Study 3, self-compassion, but not selfesteem, was related to more favorable ratings of other people andlower negative affect after receiving unflattering feedback.
Self-compassion and self-esteem were also differentially related
to the degree to which participants attributed negative outcomes tothemselves. Participants high in self-esteem tended to attribute
unflattering evaluations and negative events less to themselves
than people low in self-esteem. In contrast, people high in selfcompassion did the opposite, attributing unfavorable events moreto their own personality. Thus, one difference between selfcompassion and self-esteem might involve defensiveness. Whenpeople high in self-esteem encounter negative life events, theysometimes engage in self-serving biases (e.g., downward social
comparisons, egotistical attributions), presumably because suchreactions help to make them feel better about themselves (Blaine &Crocker, 1993; Taylor & Brown, 1988). In contrast, selfcompassionate people may assume personal responsibility while
simultaneously being kind to themselves.
Both of these tactics can help people to avoid negative selffeelings, but self-compassion may have an advantage that selfenhancement does not. As many theorists have noted, people often
maintain positive self-feelings through self-serving illusions(Blaine & Crocker, 1993; Leary, 2004; Murray, Holmes, & Griffin, 1996; Taylor & Brown, 1988). However, such illusions areoften maintained tenuously, girded by a certain degree of selfdeception and in spite of other people’s unflattering judgments.
Not only do self-serving illusions compromise people’s ability to
see themselves and other people accurately (Leary, 2004, 2007),
but they are sometimes impossible to sustain in the face of incontrovertible evidence of one’s shortcomings. In contrast, a selfcompassionate orientation requires no illusions or defensivenessbut rather involves a clear perception of one’s characteristics, both
good and bad. Given that it may be more beneficial to recognize
rather than deny one’s shortcomings, while remaining kind andunderstanding toward oneself, self-compassion may foster accurate perceptions and, thus, more effective behavior.
Recently, Gilbert (2005; Gilbert & Irons, 2005) has contrasted
self-compassion and self-esteem with reference to their relationships to biopsychosocial systems that mediate reactions to threat.
He suggested that self-compassion deactivates the “threat system”(associated with insecurity and defensiveness) and activates the“self-soothing system” (associated with feelings of safety),
whereas self-esteem is associated with evaluations of one’s rela-tive superiority and social rank. Thus, self-compassion promotes
emotional regulation, but self-esteem does not. Our studies do notaddress whether two fundamentally different systems are involved
in self-compassion versus self-esteem, but the findings are consistent with the idea that self-compassion and self-esteem have quite
different effects.
A few findings from the present studies show that selfcompassion is particularly beneficial for people who are low in
self-esteem, suggesting that people who treat themselves compassionately in spite of unflattering self-evaluations fare as well, if notbetter, than those with high self-esteem. This pattern may emerge
from the fact that it may be better to have nondefensive (i.e.,
self-compassionate) low self-esteem than defensive high selfesteem. This consideration raises the possibility that selfcompassion may help to distinguish people with true or authentic
self-esteem from those with defensive self-esteem (Schneider &Turkat, 1975). People high in both self-compassion and selfesteem might be more likely to have “optimal” self-esteem that ischaracterized, among other things, by stable feelings of self-worththat do not fluctuate greatly over time (Kernis, 2003). As a result,people with optimal self-esteem are less defensive and do not needto improve their self-feelings through downward social comparison and other self-enhancing tactics.
Perhaps the most striking finding vis-à-vis the comparison ofself-compassion and self-esteem was that self-compassion rather
than self-esteem accounted for more of the unique variance inoutcomes that are typically regarded as correlates of self-esteem. A
great deal of previous research has shown that trait self-esteem
predicts almost all negative emotions, including anxiety, depression, embarrassment, and hurt feelings (Baumeister et al., 2003;
Leary, Schreindorfer, & Haupt, 1995). However, the fact thatsimultaneous regression analyses showed that these relationships
were more clearly associated with self-compassion than with selfesteem raises the possibility that what are widely regarded as
self-esteem effects may, in fact, be better explained in terms ofself-compassion. Clearly, this possibility warrants a great deal ofresearch attention.

Avenues for Future Research
Although the present studies provide glimpses of the thoughtsthat are associated with a self-compassionate perspective, additional research is needed to describe the cognitions and selfevaluations of self-compassionate people more fully. For example,
it is unclear from our studies whether people who are high inself-compassion engage in self-evaluation less than people who are
low in self-compassion or whether they self-evaluate just as frequently but maintain a reasonably positive self-view by accepting
themselves in spite of their shortcomings (see Chamberlain &Haaga, 2001a, 2001b).
Although self-compassion appears to have certain benefits, future research should explore the possibility that it may also havedrawbacks. For example, it is important to consider whether selfcompassionate people are sometimes complacent or lazy, forgiving
themselves for their mistakes and not taking action to prevent
future ones. Previous research has suggested that this is not thecase, showing that self-compassion is not related to the stringency
of people’s personal standards and that students high in selfcompassion were more likely to react to academic failure by

SELF-COMPASSION

viewing it as a chance for growth, acceptance, and positive reinterpretation (Neff et al., 2005). Self-compassion correlated negatively with denial or mental disengagement, indicating a mindsetof confronting current negative outcomes rather than avoiding
them. In line with this finding, Studies 3 and 5 revealed that
self-compassionate people took responsibility for their actions.
Even so, an interesting question for future research is precisely
why self-compassion does not lead to indifference or complacency.
Third, although Study 5 was not designed to help participants
with a particular personal problem, the results suggest that fostering a self-compassion mindset may be beneficial in clinical settings with clients who are excessively self-critical. Indeed, researchers have begun to explore the psychotherapeutic benefits ofself-compassion (Gilbert & Irons, 2005) as well as examine therole of self-compassion in the effectiveness of other treatments,
such as mindfulness-based stress reduction (Shapiro, Astin,
Bishop, & Cordova, 2005). Rather than focusing on changing
clients’ self-evaluations, as many cognitive– behavioral approaches do, self-compassion changes people’s relationships totheir self-evaluations. In clinical settings, clients with low selfesteem may be better served by interventions that foster selfcompassion rather than self-esteem. If clients learn to feel better
about themselves but continue to castigate themselves when they
fail or make mistakes, then they will remain unable to cope
nondefensively with their difficulties. And, perhaps most importantly, it should be easier to teach people with low self-esteem tobe self-compassionate than to raise their self-esteem (Swann,1997). Although clinical psychologists have begun to explore theclinical benefits of training people to be self-compassionate (Gilbert & Irons, 2005; Marlatt, 2002; Wiser & Telch, 1999), a great
deal of research is needed on the basic processes involved inself-compassion.
Finally, future research should examine how self-compassionate
people respond to serious real-life events. The situations thatparticipants confronted in our studies were relatively mild incomparison to many of the hardships people encounter in daily
life. Our research shows that being self-compassionate helps people deal with real and imagined negative events, but the question
remains of the degree to which treating oneself kindly buffers
people against the impact of severe challenges in everyday life.

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Received August 16, 2006
Revision received September 5, 2006
Accepted September 25, 2006 䡲