Pull yourself out of a dark place: Self-compassion moderates the relationships between ostracism, meaningful existence, and darkness judgment

In this research, we aimed to investigate the role of trait self-compassion in moderating ostracism’s effect on perceived meaningful existence and perceptual judgments of the environment. Specifically, we conducted two studies to test whether ostracism thwarts meaningful existence, thereby increasing darkness judgment (i.e., judge one’s surrounding lighting as darker). Moreover, we examined whether trait self-compassion moderates the proposed mediation effect such that the effect of ostracism is attenuated among participants with high trait self-compassion. The results showed that participants in the ostracism condition reported less meaningful existence and more darkness judgment than participants in the control conditions did (Studies 1 and 2). Moreover, meaningful existence mediated the effect of ostracism on darkness judgment (Studies 1 and 2). In addition, trait self-compassion moderated the indirect effect such that the mediation effect was observed only among participants with low trait self-compassion (Study 2). The current findings show that trait self-compassion is a potential resource for people to quell the adverse effects of ostracism on psychological well-being and perceptual judgments of the environment. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.