Be kind to yourself even if others don’t: Ostracism, self-regulation, and self-compassion

Objectives: This research included two studies which examined whether self-compassion would moderate the relationship between ostracism and self-regulation. Methods: In Study 1, 204 adults were recruited on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). They completed a set of self-reported measures about their trait self-compassion, dispositional ostracism, and dispositional self-regulation. In Study 2, 202 adults were also recruited on MTurk. They completed the same trait self-compassion measures as in Study 1. Then, they were told to do a mental visualization task but in fact experiencing ostracism manipulation by playing Cyberball, either in the randomly assigned experimental (ostracism) condition or control (included) condition. After that, their state self-regulation, state tendencies of procrastination, and state tendencies of risk-taking were measured. Moderation analyses were conducted to analyze the data in both studies. Results: In Study 1, significant main effects of ostracism and self-compassion on self-regulation were found. The interaction effect between ostracism and self-compassion on self-regulation was significant, but the expected buffering effect was not shown. The current results only suggested that under lower levels of ostracism experiences, people with higher levels of self-compassion had higher levels of self-regulation than those with lower levels of self-compassion. In Study 2, only significant main effects of self-compassion on state self-regulation, state tendencies of procrastination, and state tendencies of risk-taking were found. In general, people with higher levels of self-compassion showed higher levels of state self-regulation (Study 1), lower state tendencies of procrastination, and lower state tendencies of risk-taking (Study 2). Conclusion: The findings suggest that people with higher trait self-compassion tend to have higher levels of self-regulation, both dispositional and state. Further studies can further investigate the moderating role of induced self-compassion as a possible buffer for the negative consequences on actual self-regulated behaviours resulted from different ostracism experiences. All rights reserved.