Self-compassion and construal level theory: The role of self-compassion in decreasing the effect of social distance

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Tezin Türü: Doktora

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Edebiyat Fakültesi, Psikoloji Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2018

Öğrenci: GAYE SOLMAZER

Danışman: TÜRKER ÖZKAN

Özet:

Construal Level Theory (CLT) suggests that psychological distance determines the level of abstraction of mental representations used in cognition. It also suggests that this is important in determining how people evaluate, perceive and predict future, and behave. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of trait and induced self-compassion in CLT. It was hypothesized that individuals who are dispositionally high in self-compassion or who are situationally induced to adopt self-compassion construe socially distant events less abstractly or near events less concretely than those who are dispositionally low in self-compassion or who are not induced to self-compassion. A total of 187 students participated in a 2 (social distance: self, other) X 3 (self-compassion manipulation: self-compassion, self-esteem, control) experimental design. There was a significant effect of social distance in an unexpected direction for the partner selection task although the radio satisfaction task did not reveal a significant main effect of social distance. Hence, this study failed to replicate the tenets of CLT in Turkey in general. Radio v satisfaction task revealed that when participants received self-esteem writing task, the levels of radio satisfaction were higher in other-condition as compared to those in self-rating condition with the radio with positive secondary but negative primary functions. Finally, trait self-compassion moderated the effect of social distance in partner selection task (only for the importance of low-level feature). The results of the present study were discussed in relation to previous literature.