Evidence for self-compassionate talk: What do people actually say?

Self-compassion research has relied heavily on self-report measures; less is known about its role in self-directed thoughts during challenging or stressful situations. A vignette measure portraying difficult hypothetical situations was developed to examine emerging adults’ self-directed thoughts, with a focus on identifying compassionate and uncompassionate thoughts of different kinds. An MTurk sample (N = 103) was used for the development of the vignette measure, and an undergraduate sample (N = 478) was used to assess its application. Participant responses were coded based on perceived function, resulting in 29 categories. Overall, thoughts that conveyed a lack of compassion were more common than compassionate thoughts. Factor analysis yielded six- and five-factor solutions for failure- and rejection-based vignettes, respectively. Three factors were common to both contexts: (1) Strong Negative responses included self-judgment and alienation; (2) Positive responses included self-encouragement, self-care, social reasoning and problem-solving; and (3) Externalizing responses involved blaming or devaluing people or activities. Component scores for the first two factors generally were associated with self-reported shame, self-criticism, self-esteem and self-compassion in the expected directions. In contrast, Externalization was inversely associated with guilt. Observation and conceptual categorization of self-compassionate and uncompassionate thoughts complements and informs questionnaire-based research.