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Linking Self-Compassion and Prosocial Behavior in Adolescents: The Mediating Roles of Relatedness and Trust

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Abstract

Self-compassion involves treating oneself with kindness rather than harsh judgement, viewing imperfection as an inherent part of shared human experience rather than seeing them as isolating, and being mindful of painful feelings rather than over-identifying with them. Abundant evidence has identified the adaptive role of self-compassion on multiple intrapersonal outcomes, such as mental health, emotional well-being and improvement motivation. However, relatively few is known about self-compassion’s interpersonal/social benefits, especially in adolescents. The present study examined the relationships between self-compassion, satisfaction of relatedness, general trust, and prosocial behavior in a relatively large Chinese high school adolescent sample (N = 3238, 47.8% boys; Mage = 15.66 years, SD = 0.80). We observed that self-compassion was positively associated with adolescents’ prosocial behavior, and that relatedness and trust mediated the positive association. Moreover, we found that boys maintained a slightly higher level of self-compassion than girls, and multi-group analysis showed that the relationship between self-compassion and trust was also slightly greater in boys than girls. The present study sheds light on how self-compassion is associated with positive social behavior in adolescents. We suggest that self-compassion intervention could be adapted and implemented during this critical developmental period. More research is encouraged to further discover the adaptive functions of self-compassion in social context.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the MOE Project of Key Research Institutes of Humanities and Social Science at Universities (16JJD880007), Research Institute of Wang Yangming's Philosophy of Mind & Current Social Mentality of Confucius Academy (KXTXT201704), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2018ECNU-HLYT022).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China

    Ying Yang

  2. Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education (Beijing Normal University), Institute of Developmental Psychology, Beijing Normal University, 19 Xinjiekouwai Street, Haidian District, Beijing, 100875, People’s Republic of China

    Zhen Guo & Yu Kou

  3. MiZhi Middle School of Shaanxi Province, Shaanxi, 718100, China

    Ben Liu

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  1. Ying Yang
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  2. Zhen Guo
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Correspondence to Yu Kou.

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Yang, Y., Guo, Z., Kou, Y. et al. Linking Self-Compassion and Prosocial Behavior in Adolescents: The Mediating Roles of Relatedness and Trust. Child Ind Res 12, 2035–2049 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-019-9623-2

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