Self-Compassion And Motivation

Self-Compassion and Motivation in Undergraduate Students

A review of the empirical literature on the topics of self-compassion, motivation and undergraduate college students was conducted by examining articles in peer reviewed journal from the dates 2003 to 2015. The research on Self-Compassion began with two seminal articles published by Kristen Neff in 2003, thus creating a starting point for this review.

The following databases were searched: ProQuest Central, Jstore, APApsychnet, ProQuest Dissertations, CINAHL, Education Source, EBSCO, ERIC, WorldCat, Google Scholar, Sage, Taylor & Francis, Science Direct and Web of Science.

For the purposes of this study the following keywords were used: undergraduates and self-compassion, and self-determination,

From the perspective of Self-Determination Theory, individuals make more personally rewarding choices without any external rewards. Self- determination theory explains the ways in which human behavior is self-motivated and self-determined. Self-Determination Theory indicates that humans have “inherent growth tendencies” (Deci and Ryan, 1985) and that our behavior is innately positive. Research on the theory has shown these tendencies to be universal and remain stable across gender, age, and culture (Chirkov, Ryan, Kim, & Kaplan,

People who have self-compassion are able to examine their thoughts and accept them as valid more than those who score lower on the SCS (Leary, Tate, Adams, Batts Allen & Hancock, 2007; Neff, Hsieh, Dejitterat, 2005; Neff et al., 2007). The difference is that self-compassion people create positive feelings by accepting their negative feelings, allowing themselves to experience them and not judging themselves harshly. Self-compassionate people tend to understand that all people have difficult situations. (Neff, 2003a) Emotional intelligence, wisdom, social connectedness and satisfaction with life in general are all associated with feeling self-compassionate (Neff, 2003a; Neff, Pisitsungkagarn and Hseih, 2008). Individuals who score high on the SCS tend to experience more happiness, optimism, curiosity, creativity and also more positive emotions that self-critical individuals (Hollis-Walker & Colosimo, 2011; Neff et al.,