Ithaca College

Leigh Ann Vaughn presented a poster co-authored with Emma Hayden (Psychology BA, 2015). This poster included Ms. Hayden’s honors thesis research, and it was about psychological need support, regulatory focus, and self-compassion.

Self-compassion is a coping technique that involves extending kindness to the self, keeping a balanced perspective on painful experiences, and remembering that everyone has similar hard times. We found that people are more self-compassionate in activities where they feel more lovable and loving, and where they feel more competent. In contrast, feeling authentic did not directly relate to self-compassion. Additionally, we found that people were more likely to feel self-compassionate in experiences where they were pursuing their hopes than in experiences where they were pursuing their duties.

The national conference was the Annual Convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, which took place in San Diego, CA.

The collection of data for this research was supported by a Provost Office Academic Project Grant in 2014 and a Provost Office Academic Challenge Grant in 2015.