title: Body image and college women's quality of life: The importance of being self-compassionate.
abstract: This study explored self-compassion as a mediator between body dissatisfaction, social comparison based on body image and quality of life in 662 female college students. Path analysis revealed that while controlling for body mass index, self-compassion mediated the impact of body dissatisfaction and unfavourable social comparisons on psychological quality of life. The path model accounted for 33 per cent of psychological quality of life variance. Findings highlight the importance of self-compassion as a mechanism that may operate on the association between negative body image evaluations and young women's quality of life.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive and Behavioural Centre for Research and Intervention (CINEICC), University of Coimbra, Portugal cristianaoduarte@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Cristiana
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Duarte
authors.affiliation: Cognitive and Behavioural Centre for Research and Intervention (CINEICC), University of Coimbra, Portugal.
authors.forename: Cláudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ferreira
authors.affiliation: Cognitive and Behavioural Centre for Research and Intervention (CINEICC), University of Coimbra, Portugal.
authors.forename: Inês A
authors.initials: IA
authors.lastname: Trindade
authors.affiliation: Cognitive and Behavioural Centre for Research and Intervention (CINEICC), University of Coimbra, Portugal.
authors.forename: José
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pinto-Gouveia
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001828:Body Image / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D010549:Personal Satisfaction; D011788:Quality of Life / Q000523:psychology*; D012649:Self Concept; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D014495:Universities; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: body image; compassion; protective factors; well-being; youth