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Self-compassion and psychological well-being among adolescents in
Hong Kong: Exploring gender differences
Xiaoyan Sun ⁎, David W. Chan, Lai-kwan Chan
Program for the Gifted and Talented, Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong
abstractarticle info
Article history:
Received 3 March 2016
Received in revised form 1 June 2016
Accepted 5 June 2016
Available online 14 June 2016
The present study examined the relationship between self-compassion components and psychological well-
being (PWB) ina group of Hong Kong adolescents (aged 12 to 16, N= 277). In general, girls held overall higher
PWB than boys. Except for autonomy and self-acceptance, girls reported higher scores on other dimensions of
PWB. In addition, girls and boys shared similar profiles of self-compassion components, with boys manifesting
higher isolation than girls. More importantly, self-compassion components facilitated PWB following different
pathways for boys and girls. Boys benefited maximally from mindfulness, which revealed significant positive ef-
fects on their autonomy, purpose in life, environmental mastery, and personal growth. Girls benefited most from
common humanity, which had positive effects on their autonomy, environmental mastery, positive relations
with others and personal growth. These findings extended our understanding of self-compassion in terms of
the downstream effects of its individual components, and implicated the importance of integrating genderspec-
ificity into self-compassion intervention programs.
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Self-compassion
Psychological well-being
Adolescents
Chinese culture
1. Introduction
Recently there have been increased calls to apply positive psycholo-
gy in schools and youth-oriented settings (Clonan, Chafouleas,
McDougal, & Riley-Tillman, 2004). On the one hand, teaching positive
psychology concepts to young people can equip them with skills and
knowledge that may have a lasting positive impact on their lives. On
the other hand, positive psychology has made important progress in
the investigation of strengths, well-being, and happiness (Diener,
Lucas, & Scollon, 2006) with adults. It is a time to extend application
of such knowledge to adolescents. Especially in Hong Kong, research
with adolescents showed pronounced unbalance. Vast majority of re-
search has focused on psychopathology such as suicidal ideation (Lam
et al., 2004), there lacks research on well-being and its contributory fac-
tors. Considering the absence of malfunction does not necessarily
equate with psychological flourish (Keyes, 2009), our current research
aimed to directly investigate adolescents' well-being from perspectives
of positive psychology and throw light on the design and implementa-
tion of programs promoting adolescents' well-being in Hong Kong. To
this end, we adopted Ryff's (1989) psychological well-being (PWB)
and Neff's (2003a, 2003b) self-compassion, investigating how self-com-
passion, as character strength, contributed to different aspects of PWB.
Ryff's psychological well-being (Ryff, 1989) is a framework devel-
oped to investigate individuals' eudaimonic well-being. Following the
eudaimonic tradition, psychological well-being identifies six dimen-
sions, namely, autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth,
positiverelation with others, purposein life, and self-acceptance, torep-
resent what it means to be psychologically flourishing at one's maxi-
mum potential. From those specific components, we can see that
Ryff's framework, differing from other hedonic well-being indicators,
takes personal development and self-realization as thefundamental el-
ements in defining well-being. This framework is thus suitable for in-
vestigating adolescents' positive functioning, since one of the most
important themes at this stage is personal growth. Moreover, psycho-
logical well-being has also been found to be positively related to many
other facets of individual functioning such as biological health and he-
donic well-being, and negatively to maladaptive functioning (Ryff &
Singer, 1996). It is thus important to identify factors contributing to ad-
olescents' psychological well-being.
However,adolescence is a stage during which specific risk factorsfor
psychological well-being may emerge. Notably, cognitive and socio-
emotional developments could promote adolescents to relate to them-
selves and the world in increasingly complex and sophisticated ways.
This change makes them become self-conscious, especially of their suc-
cesses and setbacks (e.g., Rankin, Lane, Gibbons, & Gerrard, 2004), and
tend to incorporate failures into their self-appraisals, resulting in self-
criticism and exaggeration of their feelings (Neff, 2009). These negative
orientations may impair adolescents' well-being to a large extent. As
such, contributing factors that are most predictive of psychological
Personality and Individual Differences 101 (2016) 288–292
⁎Corresponding author.
E-mail address: sunxiaoyan @link.cuhk.edu.hk (X. Sun).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.06.011
0191-8869/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Personality and Individual Differences
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid
well-being may be those that can effectively help adolescents buffer
against those negative tendencies. This is why wespecify how self-com-
passion facilitated adolescents' psychological well-being in our study.
Self-compassion is defined as the ability to turn compassion inward
and hold one's feelings of suffering with a sense of warmth, connection
and concern (Neff, 2003a). In detail, self-compassion is comprised of
self-kindness, mindfulness, and commonhumanity. Self-kindness refers
to offering oneself warmth and nonjudgmental understanding. Com-
mon humanity refers to recognizing that imperfections and adversities
are unavoidable parts of the shared human experience. Mindfulness re-
fers to taking a balanced approach to, insteadof suppressing or exagger-
ating, painful feelings. In developing a measurement tool, Neff (2003b)
also introduced self-judgment, isolation and over-identification to as-
sess these three components, resulting in the Self-Compassion Scale
(SCS) consisting of six subscales.
Conceptually, self-compassionate individuals, holding health atti-
tude toward selves, should be less likely to develop those negative ori-
entations. Empirically, self-compassion can prevent individuals from
pathological symptoms such as anxiety and depression (e.g., Pauley &
McPherson, 2010). Besides, self-compassion benefited various aspects
of positive functioning, serving as strong predictors of hedonic forms
of well-being characterized by subjective happiness (Hollis-Walker &
Colosimo, 2011; Neff, Kirkpatrick, & Rude, 2007), positive affect (Neff
& Vonk, 2009) and life satisfaction (Allen & Leary, 2010). Though
these findings were primarily obtained with adults, there was at least
one previous study that reported positive effects of self-compassion
on hedonic forms of well-being among adolescents (e.g., Neff &
McGehee, 2010). Based on these evidences and the fact that psycholog-
ical well-being is not completely independent of hedonic well-being
(Ryan & Deci, 2000), positive association can be expected between ado-
lescents' self-compassion and psychological well-being.
It is still less straightforward to see whether boys and girls equally
benefit from being self-compassionate, since previous research obtain-
ed mixed results regarding gender differences in self-compassion.
While some found females reported lower self-compassion than males
(Neff, 2003a; Neff & McGehee, 2010), others did not obtain significant
results (Neff, Pisitsungkagarn, & Hsieh, 2008; Yang, 2016). Because of
the application of comprehensive score rather than subscale scores of
Self-Compassion Scale in those studies, it is hard to locate the sources
for such disparity (Yarnell et al., 2015). Yet one potential factor leading
to the inconsistent findings may be gender-specific socialization, which
exerts opposite effects on different dimensions of self-compassion. For
example, the socialization girls experience emphasizes self-sacrifice to
satisfy theneeds of others over their own, which may impair girls' abil-
ity in treating themselves with self-kindness and thus result in low level
of self-compassion. Meanwhile, socialization for girls places importance
on development of tender qua lities such as tranquilizing and smoothing
(Raffaelli & Ontai, 2004), which can be readily employed by girls in
experiencing sufferings and thus increase their self-compassion.
The gender issue may become more complicated under a non-west-
ern cultural context. In particular, high level of interdependent self-con-
strual (Kitayama, Markus, Matsumoto, & Norasakkunkit, 1997)in
Eastern culture may have differential implications for females and
males in terms of the relationships between self-compassion compo-
nents and psychological well-being. For one thing, such self-view im-
plies great importance of human interconnectedness (Kitayama &
Markus, 2000), which may encourage common humanity. Being more
aware of and affected by interpersonal processes (Acitelli, 1992), fe-
males may benefit more from high level of common humanity in the so-
cial context. In addition, high interdependent self-construal may
promote social conformity, requiring harsh self-regulatory strategies
(Kitayama et al., 1997). Self-criticism, which enables clear awareness
of one's deficits and thus facilitates self-improvement efforts (e.g.,
Heine, 2003), may become a more adaptive factor for males, since
they are more dominant than women (Suh, Moskowitz, Fournier, &
Zuroff, 2004) and may be more inclined to integrate self-criticism into
their self-regulatory processes. Hence, self-judgment, rather than
being negative to self-kindness, is expected to be a positive factor for
males in Asia.
We brought together psychological well-being and self-compassion
as a way of understanding adolescents' positive functioning. We expect-
ed high levels of common humanity and self-judgment for girls and
boys respectively under the Asian cultural setting. With the notion
that socio-cultural contexts influence differentially the specific facets
of self-compassion, we used subscale scores, instead of merging them
into one comprehensive score. Conducting separate analyses for girls
and boys, we aimed to delineate gender-differentiated pathways from
self-compassion to psychological well-being: while self-kindness and
common humanity may be most relevant to girls, self-judgment may
appear more prominent for boys.
2. Method
2.1. Participants and procedures
A total of 277 adolescents attending secondary school voluntarily
participated in this study. These students were aged 12 to 16 (M=
14.23, SD = 1.35, Mode of age is 14.00). Among them, 144 (52.0%)
were boys. Participants completed the questionnaires anonymously in
the classroom environment. Written informed consent was obtained
from all participants and their guardians prior to the assessment
session.
2.2. Measures
2.2.1. Self-Compassion Scale (SCS)
Participants' self-compassion was assessed by the Self-Compassion
Scale (SCS; Neff, 2003b) consisting of six subscales: Self-Kindness (5
items; e.g., “I try to be understanding and patient towards those aspects
of my personality I don't like”), Self-Judgment (5 items; e.g., “I'm
disapproving and judgmental about my own flaws and inadequacies”),
Common Humanity (4 items; e.g., “I try to see my failings as part of the
human condition”), Isolation (4 items; e.g., “When I think about my in-
adequacies it tends to make me feel more separate and cut off from the
rest of the world”), Mindfulness (4 items; e.g., “Whensomething painful
happens I try to take a balanced view of the situation”), and Over-Iden-
tification (4 items; e.g., “When I'm feelingdown I tend to obsess and fix-
ate on everything that's wrong”). Neff (2003b) reported sound
psychometric properties of the scale (αs for six subscales from 0.75 to
0.81) and adequate fit for a six-factor model. In the current study, we re-
ferred to a Chinese version adapted to college students in Hong Kong by
Wong and Mak (2013) and slightly revised the wordings to ensure the
statements are comprehensible to adolescents. Our revised SCS has
demonstrated good internal reliabilities in the six subscales (αs from
0.66 to 0.78; see Table 1 for details). In completing SCS, participants
were required to indicate to what extent they agree with 26 statements
on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (almost never)to5(almost always).
2.2.2. Psychological Well-Being Scale (PWBS)
A 24-item Chinese version Psychological Well-Being Scale was ap-
plied in the current study. This brief PWBS has been found to be valid
and reliable in assessing adolescents' psychological well-being in Hong
Kong (Chan, Chan, & Sun, 2015). Each of the six dimensions contained
4 items, Autonomy (e.g., “My decisions are not usually influenced by
what everyone else is doing”), Environmental Mastery (e.g., “In general,
I feel I can manage the situation in which I live”), Personal Growth (e.g.,
“I think it is important to have new experiences that challenge how you
think about yourself and the world”), Positive Relations with Others
(e.g., “Most people see me as loving and affectionate”), Purpose in Life
(e.g., “I have a sense of direction and purpose in life”), and Self-Accep-
tance (e.g., “When I look at the story of my life, I am pleased with how
things have turned out”). Good internal reliabilities for the six subscales
289X. Sun et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 101 (2016) 288–292
were also reported in this study (αs from 0.72 to 0.85; see Table1 for d e-
tails). In completingPWBS, participants were asked to indicate whether
each of the 24 statements describes them accurately along a 5-point
scale with response options ranging from 1 (least like me)to5(most
like me).
2.3. Overview of analyses
We first conducted confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) to ensure fac-
torial validity of SCS and PWBS. Then, descriptive analyses and t-tests
were carried out to examine gender differences in different components
of self-compassion and psychological well-being. Finally, we conducted
separate simple regressions for girls and boys. Six self-compassion com-
ponents were included simultaneously as predictors and one dimension
of psychological well-being was included as the outcome.
3. Results
3.1. Factorial validity of self-compassion and psychological well-being
To begin with, we validated the factorial structures of self-compas-
sion and psychological well-being. All CFA analyses were conducted
on Mplus 6.1 (Muthén & Muthén, 2010). To determine model fit, we
followed the recommendation by Kline (2011) and included the chi-
square test, the CFI (comparative fit index), the RMSEA (root mean
square error of approximation) paired with its 90% CI (confidence inter-
val), and the SRMR (standardized root mean square residual). Models
were considered to attain acceptable fit to the data at values of ≤0.08
for the SRMR and the RMSEA (Browne & Cudeck, 1993).
A six-factor model of self-compassion received acceptable model fit,
χ
2
=751.63,df =284,pb.001,CFI =.80,RMSEA= . 08, 90% CI [0.07;
0.08], SRMR = 0.08. For comparison, we also tested three alternative
models that were mentioned in previous studies (e.g. Neff, 2003b,
Wong & Mak, 2013), each of which obtained inadequate fit. PWBS
corresponded to six-factor model: χ
2
=601.54,df=
237 , pb. 001 , CFI = .89 , RMSEA = .08, 90% CI [0.07; 0.08], SRMR =
0.05. Detailed results are summarized in Table 2.
3.2. Gender differences in self-compassion and psychological well-being
From results summarized in Table 3,boys(M=2.86,SD =0.91)re-
ported higher isolation than girls (M= 2.60, SD =0.93),t=2.403,p=
0.017. Boys and girls responded similarly to other self-compassioncom-
ponents. There were significant gender variations in overall psycholog-
ical well-being. Specific to individual psychological well-being
components, except for autonomy and self-acceptance, girls scored con-
sistently higher than boys on all other facets of psychological well-
being. Compared to boys, girls demonstrated higher endorsements for
environmental mastery, M
boy
= 3.75, SD
boy
=0.81,M
girl
= 3.95, SD
girl
=
0.72, t=−2.174, p=0.031, personal growth, M
boy
= 4.22, SD
boy
=
0.67, M
girl
= 4.38, SD
girl
= 0.52, t=−2.099, p=0.037, positive rela-
tions with others, M
boy
=3.61,SD
boy
=0.82,M
girl
=3.96,SD
girl
=
0.68, t=−3.928, pb0.001, and purpose in life M
boy
= 3.77, SD
boy
=
0.94, M
girl
=4.12,SD
girl
=0.75,t=−3.402, p=0.001.
Table 2
Fit indices of confirmatory factor analysis for Self-Compassion Scale and Psychological Well-Being Scale.
Model χ
2
df RMSEA [90% CI] CFI SRMR Δχ
2
Δdf p
Model comparison for self-compassion
Model 1a (1-factor) 1703.708 299 0.130 [0.124, 0.136] 0.408 0.155 –––
Model 1b (3-factor) 1578.851 296 0.125 [0.119, 0.131] 0.459 0.163 124.857 3 b0.001
Model 1c (with one 2nd-order factor) 1099.912 293 0.100 [0.093, 0.106] 0.660 0.142 478.939 3 b0.001
Model 1d (6-factor) 751.631 284 0.077 [0.070, 0.084] 0.803 0.077 296.143 6 b0.001
Model fit for psychological well-being
Model 2 (6-factor) 601.540 237 0.075 [0.067, 0.082] 0.886 0.052
Note. Model1a: 26 items loaded on 1 factor;Model 1b: 26 items (regardless of negatively or positively worded)loaded to self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness, respectively;
Model 1c: self-kindness,self-judgment, common humanity,isolation, mindfulness, and over-identification as 1st-orderfactors and self-compassion asthe 2nd-order factor;Model 1d: 26
items loaded to six interrelated factors: self-kindness,self-judgment, common humanity,isolation, mindfulness andover-identification. Model2: 24 items loaded to six correlated factors:
autonomy, environmental mastery, positive relations with other, personal growth, purpose in life, and self-acceptance.
Table 1
Correlations of subscales of Self-Compassion (SC) and subscales of Psychological Well-Being (PWB) (n=277).
Inter-correlation between six components of SC
1 23 4 5 6 78910111213
1. Self-Kindness –
2. Self-Judgment 0.07 –
3. Common Humanity 0.46⁎⁎⁎ 0.36⁎⁎⁎ –
4. Isolation −0.20⁎⁎ 0.39⁎⁎⁎ −0.001 –
5. Mindfulness 0.61⁎⁎⁎ 0.37⁎⁎⁎ 0.58⁎⁎⁎ −0.13⁎–
6. Over-Identification −0.23⁎⁎⁎ 0.48⁎⁎⁎ −0.003 0.65⁎⁎⁎ −0.15⁎⁎ –
Correlations between SC and PWB Inter-correlation between six dimensions of PWB
7. Autonomy 0.30⁎⁎⁎ 0.18⁎⁎ 0.29⁎⁎⁎ −0.15⁎0.42⁎⁎⁎ −0.08 –
8. Environmental Mastery 0.38⁎⁎⁎ 0.15⁎⁎ 0.34⁎⁎⁎ −0.25⁎⁎⁎ 0.43⁎⁎⁎ −0.19⁎⁎ 0.65⁎⁎⁎ –
9. Personal Growth 0.33⁎⁎⁎ 0.21⁎⁎ 0.38⁎⁎⁎ −0.16⁎⁎ 0.44⁎⁎⁎ −0.11 0.50⁎⁎⁎ 0.64⁎⁎⁎ –
10. Positive Relation with Others 0.32⁎⁎⁎ 0.10 0.29⁎⁎⁎ −0.24⁎⁎⁎ 0.34⁎⁎⁎ −0.18⁎⁎ 0.44⁎⁎⁎ 0.63⁎⁎⁎ 0.57⁎⁎⁎ –
11. Purpose in Life 0.30⁎⁎⁎ 0.21⁎⁎ 0.28⁎⁎⁎ −0.16⁎⁎ 0.40⁎⁎⁎ −0.08 0.55⁎⁎⁎ 0.68⁎⁎⁎ 0.64⁎⁎⁎ 0.68⁎⁎⁎ –
12. Self-Acceptance 0.51⁎⁎⁎ 0.07 0.39⁎⁎⁎ −0.31⁎⁎⁎ 0.45⁎⁎⁎ −0.24⁎⁎⁎ 0.59⁎⁎⁎ 0.73⁎⁎⁎ 0.63⁎⁎⁎ 0.62⁎⁎⁎ 0.63⁎⁎⁎ –
13. Overall PWB score 0.43⁎⁎⁎ 0.19⁎⁎ 0.40⁎⁎⁎ 0.26⁎⁎⁎ 0.50⁎⁎⁎ −0.18⁎⁎ 0.76⁎⁎⁎ 0.88⁎⁎⁎ 0.79⁎⁎⁎ 0.80⁎⁎⁎ 0.86⁎⁎⁎ 0.85⁎⁎⁎ –
α0.78 0.66 0.66 0.78 0.70 0.66 0.74 0.84 0.75 0.72 0.85 0.75 –
M3.26 3.00 3.43 2.74 3.50 2.85 3.72 3.85 4.30 3.78 3.94 3.91 3.92
SD 0.78 0.65 0.82 0.93 0.76 0.81 0.79 0.77 0.61 0.77 0.87 0.74 0.63
Note.
⁎pb0.05.
⁎⁎ pb0.01.
⁎⁎⁎ pb0.001.
290 X. Sun et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 101 (2016) 288–292
3.3. Gender differences in the relationship between self-compassion and
psychological well-being
Results from simple regression analyses summarized in Table 4 indi-
cated that pathways from self-compassion to psychological well-being
were different for boys and girls. Mindfulness was most adaptive for
boys, increasing their autonomy (B=0.44,se =0.13,p= 0.001), pur-
pose in life (B= 0.35, se = 0.14, p= 0.015), environmental mastery
(B=0.32,se =0.12,p= 0.008), and personal growth (B=0.29,
se =0.10,p= 0.005). Common humanity demonstrated extensive ef-
fects on girls' psychological well-being, improving their autonomy
(B= 0.20, se = 0.09, p= 0.023), environmental mastery (B= 0.20,
se = 0.08, p= 0.015), positive relations with others (B= 0.17, se =
0.08, p= 0.026), and personal growth (B= 0.15, se = 0.06, p=
0.009). While isolation reduced boys' purpose in life (B=−0.21,
se =0.10,p= 0.039), self-acceptance (B=−0.21, se = 0.08, p=
0.010) and environmental mastery (B=−0.18, se =0.09,p=
0.033), it only decreased girls' self-acceptance (B=−0.16, se = 0.07,
p= 0.034). Self-kindness, though merely showing effect on boys' self-
acceptance (B=0.29,se =09,p= 0.003), increased girls' self-accep-
tance (B=0.32,se =09,pb0.001), positive relations with others
(B=0.26,se =0.18,p= 0.005), and environmental mastery (B=
0.19, se = 0.10, p= 0.046). On the contrary, self-judgment predicted
boys' purpose in life (B=0.33,se = 0.14, p= 0.023) and environmental
mastery (B=0.24,se = 0.12, p= 0.045), yet it had no significant effect
on girls' psychological well-being. Taken together, mindfulness and iso-
lation served as predictors of overall psychological well-being for boys
while self-kindness and common humanity contributed to girls' psy-
chological well-being (see Table 4 for details).
4. Discussion
The current study added to the stream of research focusing on well-
being of adolescents and is the first attempt to extend the positive effect
of self-compassion to eudaimonic well-being of adolescents. On the
whole, adolescents in our study demonstrated favorable well-being.
They all showed strong endorsement for dimensions of psychological
well-being. More importantly, self-compassion components were con-
tributive to adolescents' psychological well-being, through gender-dif-
ferentiated pathways.
Collectively, self-kindness and common humanity facilitated girls'
psychological well-being whereas boys benefited from mindfulness
and suffered from isolation. In a society that values human interactions,
it is not surprising that common humanity yields significant effects,
varying in its manifestation with girls and boys: alleviating isolation ap-
peared more critical for boys, for they experienced isolation more fre-
quently. In addition, heightening common humanity emerged more
salutary for girls, owning to the fact that the strong connections to
others can especially shape girls' self-concepts and personal identity
Table 3
Gender differences in different dimensionsof self-compassionand psychological well-be-
ing (boys: n=144,girls:n=133).
Mean SD Diff.tSE
Self-Compassion Scale (SCS)
Self-Kindness Boys 3.33 0.75 0.132 1.413 0.093
Girls 3.20 0.81
Self-Judgment Boys 3.07 0.66 0.140 1.815 0.077
Girls 2.93 0.62
Common Humanity Boys 3.48 0.82 0.099 1.000 0.099
Girls 3.38 0.83
Isolation Boys 2.86 0.91 0.266 2.403⁎0.111
Girls 2.60 0.93
Mindfulness Boys 3.51 0.73 0.018 0.192 0.092
Girls 3.49 0.80
Over-Identification Boys 2.92 0.79 0.159 1.633 0.098
Girls 2.76 0.83
Psychological Well-Being (PWB)
Autonomy Boys 3.69 0.84 −0.059 −0.581 0.095
Girls 3.75 0.74
Environmental Mastery Boys 3.75 0.81 −0.200 −2.174⁎0.092
Girls 3.95 0.72
Personal Growth Boys 4.22 0.67 −0.152 −2.099⁎0.072
Girls 4.38 0.52
Positive Relations with Others Boys 3.61 0.82 −0.357 −3.928⁎⁎⁎ 0.091
Girls 3.96 0.68
Purpose in Life Boys 3.77 0.94 −0.350 −3.402⁎⁎ 0.103
Girls 4.12 0.75
Self-Acceptance Boys 3.89 0.77 −0.041 −0.461 0.089
Girls 3.93 0.71
Note. Diff. represents the difference in mean between boys and girls.
⁎pb0.05.
⁎⁎ pb0.01.
⁎⁎⁎ pb0.001.
Table 4
Simple regressions with dimensions of psychological well-being as outcome and components of self-compassion as predictors (n=277).
Predictors Dependent variables
Autonomy Environmental
Mastery
Personal Growth Positive Relation
with Others
Purpose in Life Self-Acceptance Overall
Psychological
Well-Being
B SE B SE B SE B SE B SE B SE B SE
Boys
Self-Kindness 0.11 0.11 0.20 0.10 0.02 0.09 0.14 0.11 0.14 0.12 0.29⁎⁎ 0.09 0.15 0.08
Self-Judgment 0.12 0.13 0.24⁎0.12 0.13 0.10 0.21 0.13 0.33⁎0.14 0.08 0.11 0.19 0.10
Common Humanity −0.11 0.11 0.02 0.10 0.12 0.08 0.08 0.10 0.01 0.12 0.14 0.09 0.04 0.08
Isolation −0.15 0.09 −0.18⁎0.09 −0.08 0.07 −0.17 0.09 −0.21⁎0.10 −0.21⁎0.08 −0.17⁎0.07
Mindfulness 0.44⁎⁎ 0.13 0.32⁎⁎ 0.12 0.29⁎⁎ 0.10 0.22 0.13 0.35⁎0.14 0.15 0.11 0.30⁎⁎ 0.10
Over-Identification 0.11 0.12 0.01 0.10 −0.03 0.09 −0.03 0.11 0.03 0.12 −0.04 0.10 0.01 0.08
Girls
Self-Kindness 0.08 0.10 0.19⁎0.10 0.13 0.07 0.26⁎⁎ 0.18 0.18 0.11 0.32⁎⁎⁎ 0.09 0.19⁎⁎ 0.07
Self-Judgment 0.15 0.13 0.11 0.10 0.08 0.09 0.09 0.12 0.12 0.14 0.06 0.12 0.10 0.09
Common Humanity 0.20⁎0.09 0.20⁎0.08 0.15⁎⁎ 0.06 0.17⁎0.08 0.10 0.09 0.14 0.07 0.16⁎⁎ 0.06
Isolation −0.09 0.08 −0.13 0.08 −0.08 0.06 −0.11 0.08 −0.07 0.09 −0.16⁎0.07 −0.11 0.06
Mindfulness 0.14 0.12 −0.03 0.11 0.05 0.08 −0.11 0.11 0.12 0.13 0.07 0.10 0.04 0.08
Over-Identification −0.08 0.11 −0.17 0.10 −0.04 0.07 −0.12 0.10 −0.01 0.11 −0.03 0.09 −0.07 0.07
Due to the limited space, we omitted coefficients for intercept and age.
Note.
⁎pb0.05.
⁎⁎ pb0.01.
⁎⁎⁎ pb0.001.
291X. Sun et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 101 (2016) 288–292
to a greater extent (Hall-Lande, Eisenberg, Christenson, & Neumark-
Sztainer, 2007).
Besides, while girls benefited from the soothing qualities of self-
kindness, self-judgment was advantageous to boys. Such disparity
may be consistent with traditional social norms requiring man to be
tough (Eisenberg & Lennon, 1983). Similar deep-rooted notions may
be extended to socialization on boys and promote them to develop
the tendency to be self-critical rather than self-compassionate.
Mindfulness, though found to promote psychological well-being for
both gender groups in an intervention study (Brown & Ryan, 2003),
only revealed its adaptiveness for boys in our study. One possibility is
that the balanced consciousness can prevent boys from suppressing vul-
nerable emotions during times of hardship as required by masculine
norms (Eisenberg & Lennon, 1983). As there are methodological differ-
ences between survey and intervention studies, our finding needs fur-
ther cross-validation.
There are several notable limitations to our study. Adolescents may
not be able to perceive accurately how self-compassionate they are,
thus making self-reports problematic. In addition, cross-sectional inves-
tigation is restricted in inferring causal relationships. Our research can-
not exclude the possibility that adolescents' psychological well-being in
turn affect their development of self-compassion. The issues of direc-
tional ambiguity need to be solved by cross-lagged or longitudinal de-
sign. Moreover, it is necessary to examine whether the gender specific
pathways linking self-compassion components to psychological well-
being persist till adulthood, when dispositions and psychological well-
being become more stable.
Self-compassion has been minimally studied in adolescents
(MacBeth & Gumley, 2012). The present study enriches our understand-
ing of self-compassion by highlighting the adaptive effects of its individ-
ual components to different gender groups in a non-western cultural
context. Though boys and girls did not reveal notable differences in
self-compassion components, consequential effects on psychological
well-being of those components varied across gender. Such gender
specificity may be particularly informed for designing and
implementing intervention programs. Interventions targeting at pro-
moting adolescents' psychological well-being should be modeled to
maximize their relevance to specific gender groups. While promoting
girls' self-kindness and common humanity are most fruitful, fostering
mindfulness and mitigating social isolation may be more rewarding to
boys.
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Erratum
Corrigendum to “Self-compassion and psychological well-being among
adolescents in Hong Kong: Exploring gender differences”[Pers. Individ. Diff.
101 (2016) 290]
Xiaoyan Sun
⁎
, David W. Chan, Lai-kwan Chan
Program for the Gifted and Talented, Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong
The authors regret omitting the minus (negative) sign for the cor-
relation between isolation and Overall PWB score in Table 1, page 290.
The correlations between these two scores should be −0.26 instead of
0.26.
The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.03.029
DOI of original article: ht tp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.06.011
⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: sunxiaoyan@link.cuhk.edu.hk (X. Sun).
Personality and Individual Differences 129 (2018) 179
Available online 21 March 2018
0191-8869/
T
