Effects of compassionate thinking on negative emotions

ABSTRACT

The present study compared the effect of compassionate thinking with other methods traditionally used in cognitive behavioural therapy (cognitive reappraisal, responsibility reattribution, and self-deflection). An instructional manipulation was used, and 207 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of these thinking styles or a control condition. The results revealed that participants who engaged in compassionate thinking and cognitive reappraisal reported significantly lower levels of negative emotions compared to those in the responsibility reattribution and control conditions. Furthermore, results of hierarchical regression analyses suggested that habitual use of self-compassion reduced negative emotions in all conditions. These findings suggest that self-compassion and reappraisal reduce negative emotions more than reattribution and self-deflection.

KEYWORDS:

• Compassionate thinking
• cognitive reappraisal
• self-compassion
• emotion regulation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C), awarded by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) (Numbers 22530758 and 25380944) to the first author. Dr Hofmann receives support from NIH/NCCAM (R01AT007257), NIH/NIMH (R01MH099021, R34MH099311, R34MH086668, R21MH102646, R21MH101567, K23MH100259), and the Department of the Army for work unrelated to the studies reported in this article.