| Self-compassion can be referred to as a way of relating to one’s pains and sufferings characterized by showing kindness and understanding to him/herself rather than self-judgement, seeing his/her own experience as being shared by all humans rather than being isolated, and mindfully perceiving ongoing feelings without ignoring or over-identification. Researches found that self-compassion plays a positive role in one’s biopsychological response, emotion balancing and behavior regulation in face of negative events. Terry and Leary(2011) proposed the model of self-regulatory resources. They hold that self-compassion is a quality that includes three dimensions which can help foster self-regulatory processes such as attention to and evaluation of ongoing behavior, and emotional regulation. Gilbert(2009) proposed that self-compassion deactivates the threat system and activates the soothing system so that one can better cope with stressful events.Executive functions,which refers to the mechanism to make performance better,involves many cognitive processes.Researchers tend to agree that executive functions consist of responses inhibition, switching of mental sets and updating of working memory. The relations between executive functions and self-regulation process are discussed. Researches indicate that executive functioning depends on the limited resources of self-regulatory. And executive functioning also plays a key role in the process of self-regulatory.Purpose:Based on the model of self-regulatory resources and soothing system relating to self-compassion, our research tries to explore the relations between self-compassion and executive functioning. We conducted 3 experiments to verify whether induced self-compassion restores the impairment caused by social exclusion of executive functions which consists of responses inhibition, switching of mental sets and updating of working memory.Method:(1)We invited 60 participants to the computer room in each experiment and they are randomly distributed to 3 groups, namely self-compassion group, exclusion group and inclusion group.(2)They played Cyberball, and each group will receive balls for pre-defined times.(3)After the game and relevant measures, the self-compassion group conducted a state self-compassion induction task, while the exclusion and inclusion group conducted a control writing task.(4)Experiment 1: Stroop task, 3(groups) × 2(task types) mixed design. The aim is to verify the restoring effects of self-compassion on the decreased performance in responses inhibition. Experiment 2: Task-swifting, 3(groups) × 2(task types) mixed design. The aim is to verify the restoring effects of self-compassion on the decreased performance in switching of mental sets. Experiment 3: N-back task, 3(groups) × 2(memory load) mixed design. The aim is to verify the restoring effects of self-compassion on the decreased performance in updating of working memory.Results :(1) In Experiment 1, the results showed that exclusion group had significantly longer RT(F=5.595,p<0.05)than the self-compassion group in inconsistent task, but there were no differences between two groups in consistent task.(2) In Experiment 2, the results showed that exclusion group had significantly longer RT(F=14.910,p<0.01) than the self-compassion group in swifting task, but there were no differences between two groups in non-swifting task.(3) In Experiment 3, the results showed that the self-compassion group had marginal significantly shorter RT(t(26)=-1.859,p=0.074)than the exclusion group in low-load task(1-back).Conclusion: The induction of state self-compassion can restore the impairment caused by social exclusion of executive functions which consists of responses inhibition, switching of mental sets and updating of working memory. |
