Love Yourself,Love Others More: The "Altruistic" Mechanism Of Self-compassion

Self-compassion,as a positive attitude towards self,has gradually attracted the attention of researchers.Especially in the field of clinical psychology,there are more and more researches related to self-compassion.These studies point to the positive effects of self-compassion on clinical patients,such as the intervention training of self-compassion for clinical patients,in order to develop positive mental ability to cope with illness and suffering.However,with the expansion of the research field,on the one hand,self-compassion research objects have gradually moved from the clinical field to the general public,and the research objects range from infants to the elderly.On the other hand,research has shifted from how self-compassion affects individuals to how self-compassion affects others.From the "egoistic" effect of self-compassion on individuals,to the "altruistic" effect of self-compassion,as well as a large number of empirical studies continue to emerge,self-compassion as a huge psychological energy,its research significance is very important.There are relatively many researches on the "egoistic" effect of self-compassion,and the research contents are quite rich.For example,self-compassion can help individuals improve themselves(Dong Yan et al.,2011),improve body image(Liss & Erchull,2015),life satisfaction(Tan Jinhua,2019),psychological resilience and academic achievement(Chong Daohan,Xiao Wen,2020),etc.The "egoism" research on self-compassion started relatively late,and the research content is also less.This is the main research direction of self-compassion research at present,and its research heat and research value have gradually attracted the attention of researchers.A more representative one is the research on the influence of self-compassion on prosocial behavior.Therefore,this study conducted a study on the influence of self-compassion on prosocial behavior,and attempted to reveal the "altruistic" psychological mechanism of self-compassion.At the same time,this "altruistic" effect was experimentally verified by means of self-compassion intervention.In study 1,538 college students were surveyed by using the self-compassion scale,the sense of life scale,the psychological resilience scale and the prosocial behavior scale.The results showed that:(1)Self-compassion,sense of life meaning,psychological resilience and prosocial behavior were significantly correlated,and self-compassion positively predicted prosocial behavior;(2)The sense of meaning of life was an independent mediator between self-compassion and prosocial behavior;(3)Psychological resilience was an independent mediator between self-compassion and prosocial behavior;(4)Self-compassion can influence prosocial behavior through the chain mediating effect between sense of life meaning and psychological resilience.In study 2,a laboratory experiment was used to initiate state self-compassion in subjects with the paradigm of memory writing.The results showed that the self-compassion priming group had a higher level of self-compassion than the control group.At the same time,the subjects in the self-compassion group showed a stronger prosocial tendency.In study 3,the systematic intervention method was adopted to intervene the self-compassion of the subjects for 7 days,and the results showed that the prosocial behavior of the subjects was also significantly improved with the improvement of the level of self-compassion.This study reveals the underlying psychological mechanism of self-compassion’s influence on prosocial behavior,which has certain enlightening significance for the social benefits of self-compassion.