A Reconsideration of the Self-Compassion Scale’s Total Score: Self-Compassion versus Self-Criticism
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The Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) is currently the only self-report instrument to measure self-compassion. The SCS is widely used despite the limited evidence for the scale's psychometric properties, with validation studies commonly performed in college students. The current study examined the factor structure, reliability, and construct validity of the SCS in a large representative sample from the community. The study was conducted in 1,736 persons, of whom 1,643 were included in the analyses. Besides the SCS, data was collected on positive and negative indicators of psychological functioning, as well as on rumination and neuroticism. Analyses included confirmatory factor analyses (CFA), exploratory factor analyses (EFA), and correlations. CFA showed that the SCS's proposed six-factor structure could not be replicated. EFA suggested a two-factor solution, formed by the positively and negatively formulated items respectively. Internal consistency was good for the two identified factors. The negative factor (i.e., sum score of the negatively formulated items) correlated moderately to strongly to negative affect, depressive symptoms, perceived stress, as well as to rumination and neuroticism. Compared to this negative factor, the positive factor (i.e., sum score of the positively formulated items) correlated weaker to these indicators, and relatively more strongly to positive affect. Results from this study do not justify the common use of the SCS total score as an overall indicator of self-compassion, and provide support for the idea, as also assumed by others, that it is important to make a distinction between self-compassion and self-criticism.
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Prior studies documented significant correlations (small/moderate to large) between self-compassion and mindfulness and between self-compassion and mental health/well-being indicators.
“Opierając się na wcześniejszych badaniach, które udokumentowały istotne korelacje (od małych/umiarkowanych do dużych) między współczuciem dla siebie i cechą uważności oraz między współczuciem dla siebie a wskaźnikami zdrowia psychicznego idobrostanu [28, 35, 36]”
From The Polish adaptation of the Self-Compassion Scale Short Form (2024) · cites this paper as [28]
The Introduction (page unavailable) reports a large negative association between self-compassion and psychological symptoms and a moderate positive association with positive affect. The Discussion (page unavailable) also describes correlations with well-being indicators, while distinguishing the scale’s positive and negative factors. Our copy does not document the claimed correlation between self-compassion and trait mindfulness. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredResearchers have suggested that the negative items of the Self-Compassion Scale correlate more with psychopathology, leading to the conclusion that positive and negative items should be investigated separately because the negative items inflate the relationships observed.
“Specifically, researchers suggested that the negative items correlate more with psychopathology, which led them to the conclusion that positive and negative items should be investigated separately, as the negative items inflate the relationships observed (López et al., 2015).”
From When ‘negativity’ becomes obstructive: a novel exploration of the two-factor model of the Self-Compassion Scale and a comparison of self-compassion and self-criticism interventions (2020) · cites this paper as López et al., 2015
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Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling Analysis of the Self-Compassion Scale
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Compassion: Embodied and Embedded
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“Further, as re-appraisal research of the original SCS has reported (e.g. Lopez et al., 2015), we examined the model fit of the two-factor model of the SCS-SF.”
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- Authors
- López, A., Sanderman, R., Smink, A., Zhang, Y., van Sonderen, E., Ranchor, A., & Schroevers, M. J.
- Affiliations
- University Medical Center Groningen (NL)
- Lingnan University (HK)
- Corresponding author
- Schroevers, Maya J.
- Venue
- PLOS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2015-07-20
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- e0132940
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4508060
- OpenAlex
- W1042705540
- Cited by
- 380
- References
- 61
- Citations by year
- 2026: 16 · 2025: 39 · 2024: 36 · 2023: 33 · 2022: 46 · 2021: 41 · 2020: 45 · 2019: 37 · 2018: 36 · 2017: 28 · 2016: 20 · 2015: 3
- FWCI
- 36.01
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- University of Twente Research Information (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- Digital Commons - Lingnan (Lingnan University) (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- University of Twente Research Information (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Psychometric Methodologies and Testing
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Keywords
- Self-Compassion Scale, self-compassion, self-criticism, scale validation, factor structure, construct validity, reliability statistics, negative affect, depressive symptoms, perceived stress, rumination, neuroticism
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Anxiety, Depression, Empathy, Factor Analysis, Statistical, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Surveys and Questionnaires, Stress, Psychological, Self Report
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