ArticleClinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science2019
Soothing Your Heart and Feeling Connected: A New Experimental Paradigm to Study the Benefits of Self-Compassion.
Article in Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 39 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
39 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The Effects of Virtual Reality on Enhancement of Self-Compassion and Self-Protection, and Reduction of Self-Criticism: A Systematic Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Pooled it
- Impact of self-guided mindfulness versus self-compassion application on physiological and psychological outcomes in workers: A randomized controlled trial.Applied psychology. Health and well-being · 2026Trial
- Electroceutical enhancement of self-compassion training using transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation: results from a preregistered fully factorial randomized controlled trial.Psychological medicine · 2025Trial
- The Western Australian medical schools mindfulness project: a randomised controlled trial.BMC medical education · 2024Trial
- Increasing autobiographical memory specificity: Using kindness meditation to impact features of memory retrieval.PloS one · 2023Trial
- Trial
- The influence of childhood trauma on social media-induced secondary traumatic stress among college students: the chain mediating effect of self-compassion and resilience.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2025Article
- Self-compassion promotes social safeness in patients with eating disorders: A 12-week longitudinal study.The British journal of clinical psychology · 2025Article
- Testing a digital and interactive scale (the three circles) to assess emotion regulation.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Addressing Shame Through Self Compassion.American journal of lifestyle medicine · 2025Review
- Article
- The effect of self-compassion versus mindfulness interventions on autonomic responses to stress in generalized anxiety disorders.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Family functioning and self-compassion among college students: examining the mediating role of mindfulness.Health psychology report · 2025Article
- Self-compassion modulates autonomic and psychological responses to stress among adults with generalized anxiety disorders.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- The Relationship Between Self-Compassion and Resilience in the General Population: Protocol for a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.JMIR research protocols · 2024Article
- Resilience Building Practices for Women Physicians.Journal of women's health (2002) · 2024Article
- Psychophysiological strategies for enhancing performance through imagery-skin conductance level analysis in guided vs. self-produced imagery.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Fixation patterns in pairs of facial expressions-preferences of self-critical individuals.PeerJ. Computer science · 2024Article
- The Effectiveness of Self-Compassion-Focused Therapy on Cognitive Vulnerability to Depression.Iranian journal of psychiatry · 2023Article
- The State- and Trait-Level Effects and Candidate Mechanisms of Four Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) Practices: Two Exploratory Studies.Mindfulness · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Self-compassion and its cultivation in psychological interventions are associated with improved mental health and well-being. However, the underlying processes for this are not well understood. We randomly assigned 135 participants to study the effect of two short-term self-compassion exercises on self-reported-state mood and psychophysiological responses compared to three control conditions of negative (rumination), neutral, and positive (excitement) valence. Increased self-reported-state self-compassion, affiliative affect, and decreased self-criticism were found after both self-compassion exercises and the positive-excitement condition. However, a psychophysiological response pattern of reduced arousal (reduced heart rate and skin conductance) and increased parasympathetic activation (increased heart rate variability) were unique to the self-compassion conditions. This pattern is associated with effective emotion regulation in times of adversity. As predicted, rumination triggered the opposite pattern across self-report and physiological responses. Furthermore, we found partial evidence that physiological arousal reduction and parasympathetic activation precede the experience of feeling safe and connected.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.