title: Self-compassion: a potential resource for young women athletes.
abstract: Self-compassion has demonstrated many psychological benefits (Neff, 2009). In an effort to explore self-compassion as a potential resource for young women athletes, we explored relations among self-compassion, proneness to self-conscious emotions (i.e., shame, guilt-free shame, guilt, shame-free guilt, authentic pride, and hubristic pride), and potentially unhealthy self-evaluative thoughts and behaviors (i.e., social physique anxiety, obligatory exercise, objectified body consciousness, fear of failure, and fear of negative evaluation). Young women athletes (N = 151; Mage = 15.1 years) participated in this study. Self-compassion was negatively related to shame proneness, guilt-free shame proneness, social physique anxiety, objectified body consciousness, fear of failure, and fear of negative evaluation. In support of theoretical propositions, self-compassion explained variance beyond self-esteem on shame proneness, guilt-free shame proneness, shame-free guilt proneness, objectified body consciousness, fear of failure, and fear of negative evaluation. Results suggest that, in addition to self-esteem promotion, self-compassion development may be beneficial in cultivating positive sport experiences for young women.
authors: School of Human Kinetics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
authors: Amber D
authors: AD
authors: Mosewich
authors: Kent C
authors: KC
authors: Kowalski
authors: Catherine M
authors: CM
authors: Sabiston
authors: Whitney A
authors: WA
authors: Sedgwick
authors: Jessica L
authors: JL
authors: Tracy
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001828:Body Image; D002170:Canada; D004644:Emotions; D004645:Empathy; D005260:Female; D006167:Guilt; D006801:Humans; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012649:Self Concept; D012752:Shame; D013177:Sports / Q000523:psychology*; D014930:Women / Q000523:psychology*