The relationship between perceptions of racism and self-compassion in Greek university students

OBJECTIVE To investigate the relationship between perceptions of racism, socio-demographic characteristics and levels of self-compassion in Greek university students. METHOD A cross-sectional, online study was conducted with 251 students of two departments of the University of the Peloponnese in Tripolis. The questionnaire included socio-demographic characteristics, the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) and the Perceived Impact of Racism scale. Data analysis was conducted with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (IBM SPSS), version 20.0. RESULTS A total of 251 students completed the questionnaire, with an average age of 23.9 +/- 6.6 years, 173 of whom were women (68.9%). On the SCS, the participants scored the highest on the mindfulness subscale (3.11 +/- 0.90), followed by the self-criticism (2.88 +/- 0.89) and over identification (2.86 +/- 0.93) subscales. On the scale Perceived Impact of Racism scale, the highest score was recorded on the subscale of "racism" as a major problem, but with a mean score lower than the median, indicating that the participants did not recognize racism as a major problem. Regarding socio-demographic characteristics, statistically significant correlation was demonstrated between racist perceptions and gender, age, and religious beliefs. CONCLUSIONS These results confirm the findings of the current literature, showing correlation of self-compassion with non-manifestation of racist perceptions.