Self-referent upward counterfactual thinking mediates the relationship between self-compassion and depression

ABSTRACT

Objective: Consistently strong negative associations have been found between self-compassion and depressive symptoms, but less is known about mechanisms that underlie this relationship. This study investigated whether four types of counterfactual thinking (self-referent upward, nonreferent upward, other-referent upward and nonreferent downward) mediate this association.

Method: One hundred and sixty-seven Australian tertiary students (76.0% female) aged between 18 and 73 years (M = 33.63, SD = 10.76) completed an online survey.

Results: Self-compassion exhibited significant negative bivariate relationships with self-referent, nonreferent, and other-referent upward counterfactual thinking, and a positive association with nonreferent downward counterfactual thinking. A multiple-mediation analysis revealed one significant indirect effect, in which highly self-compassionate participants reported lower levels of self-referent upward counterfactual thinking and, in turn, reported lower levels of depression.

Conclusions: These findings indicate that self-compassion is associated with adaptive forms of counterfactual thinking, and that one way in which self-compassion conveys its beneficial influence on depression may be through its relationship with fewer self-referent upward counterfactual thoughts. This indirect effect suggests that self-compassion interventions may be especially beneficial to depression-vulnerable individuals who tend to generate self-referent upward counterfactuals.

Key Points

What is already known about this topic:

• (1)Consistently strong negative associations have been found between self-compassion and depressive symptoms.

• (2)Less is known about mechanisms that underlie this relationship.

• (3)Identified mediators include emotion regulation tendencies, positive future outlook, and cognitive processes such as automatic and repetitive thinking.

What this topic adds:

• (1)This study found that self-referent upward counterfactual thinking tendencies also mediate this association.

• (2)High levels of self-compassion were associated with adaptive counterfactual thinking (low levels of nonreferent, self-referent, and other-referent upward and high levels of downward).

• (3)These findings suggest that self-compassion interventions may be especially beneficial to depression-vulnerable individuals who tend to generate self-referent upward counterfactuals.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-compassion
• counterfactual thinking
• depression

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. Participants also completed a life satisfaction measure that was presented randomly.