How Self-Compassion Operates within Individuals: An Examination of Latent Profiles of State Self-Compassion in the US and Japan

ObjectivesSelf-compassion is theorized to be a state of mind representing the balance of compassionate self-responding (CS; kindness, common humanity and mindfulness) and uncompassionate self-responding (UCS; self-judgment, isolation and over-identification) in times of distress. However, there is an on-going debate about this conceptualization, with some arguing that CS and UCS operate separately and independently. A variation on this view is that the operation of self-compassion differs by culture: In Eastern dialectic cultures like China and Japan, individuals are thought to experience CS and UCS simultaneously but not in Western non-dialectic cultures like the U.S. Our research investigated this issue by examining how state self-compassion operates within individuals in both the U.S. and Japan.MethodWe conducted latent profile analyses of state self-compassion both before (n = 855) and after (n = 455) a self-compassion mood induction designed to increase CS.ResultsIn both cultures, individuals were classified into one of three latent profiles only: Low State Self-Compassion (low CS and high UCS), Moderate State Self-Compassion (moderate CS and UCS), and High State Self-Compassion (high CS and low UCS). We did not find any individuals with a profile characterized by simultaneously high levels of CS and UCS. This was true even after a self-compassion mood induction, although the distribution of people in the three profiles changed reflecting a simultaneous increase in CS and decrease in UCS.ConclusionsResults suggest that CS and UCS operate holistically and not independently within individuals in both dialectical and nondialectical cultures.PreregistrationThis study is not pre-registered.