The Social Self-Compassion Scale (SSCS): Development, Validity, and Associations with Indices of Well-Being, Distress, and Social Anxiety

AbstractSelf-compassion refers to being kind and understanding towards oneself following adverse life experiences. Although it is valuable to focus on self-compassion in general, there is merit in also considering specific types of self-compassion. Accordingly, the current research describes a domain-specific measure of being self-compassionate in response to interpersonal adversities and challenges. The Social Self-Compassion Scale (SSCS) assesses self-compassion in the context of social stress (e.g., being criticized, excluded, committing a social blunder). The psychometric properties and factor structure of this domain-specific scale are explored using three university student samples (N = 719). We also report normative data from a community sample of people seeking help for shyness and social anxiety. As hypothesized, scores on the SSCS were associated negatively with social anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, and shame, and they were associated positively with social self-e fficacy and well-being as well as indices tapping mattering and mindfulness. Moreover, a series of regression analyses showed that levels of social self-compassion often accounted for significant unique variance in key outcomes beyond variance attributable to general self-compassion. Collectively, r esults support the assessment of individual differences in social self-compassion and the utility of an explicit emphasis on how people react to themselves following challenging and difficult interpe...
Source: International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction - Category: Addiction Source Type: research