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Young women athletes' self-conscious emotions and self-compassion

Athletic environments subject athletes to evaluation not only on performance, but also on appearance (Krane et al., 2001). This likely facilitates self-conscious emotions, which have a self-evaluative focus (Leary, 2004; Tracy & Robins, 2004). However, self-compassion might serve as a buffer against the self-conscious emotions by countering self-evaluative processes. The purpose of this study was to explore the relations between self-conscious emotions (i.e., shame, guilt, authentic pride, and hubristic pride) and self-evaluative thoughts and behaviours (i.e., social physique anxiety, obligatory exercise, objectified body consciousness, fear of failure, and fear of negative evaluation) for young women aged 13 -18 involved in high school sport (N = 151). The role of self-compassion as a moderator variable between self-conscious emotions and self-evaluative thoughts and behaviours was also explored. Consistent with the contention that shame and hubristic pride may be less adaptive than guilt and authentic pride, shame and hubristic pride showed positive relations with fear of failure (r = .26 and .20, respectively) and fear of negative evaluation (r = .21 and .21, respectively). Hubristic pride was also positively related to objectified body consciousness (r = .32). Conversely, guilt and authentic pride showed negative relations with objectified body consciousness (r = -.20 and -.34, respectively). Authentic pride also showed negative relations to fear of failure (r = -.38) and fear of negative evaluation (r = -.37). Self-compassion was negatively related to shame (r = -.32) and positively related to authentic pride (r = .42), but had no relation with guilt and hubristic pride. Self-compassion was also negatively related with social physique anxiety (r = -.39), objectified body consciousness (r = -.34), fear of failure (r = -.38), and fear of negative evaluation (r = -.37). Additionally, self-compassion was found to explain variance beyond self-esteem on objectified body consciousness (∆R2 = .07), fear of failure (∆R2 = .11), and fear of negative evaluation (∆R2 = .06). A significant interaction effect was found with self-compassion on the relation between shame and obligatory exercise, suggesting that even moderate levels of self-compassion may help to buffer some negative effects of shame. Taken together, these results suggest that self-compassion might be an important resource for young women involved in sport in managing self-conscious emotions.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:SSU.etd-08202008-110841
Date21 August 2008
CreatorsMosewich, Amber Dawn
ContributorsMcDougall, Patricia, MacGregor, Michael Wm., Kowalski, Kent, Humbert, Louise M.
PublisherUniversity of Saskatchewan
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-08202008-110841/
Rightsunrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report.

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