Resisting self-compassion: Why are some people opposed to being kind to themselves?

Although self-compassion is associated with positive emotions, resilience, and well-being, some people resist recommendations to treat themselves with kindness and compassion. This study investigated how people’s personal values and evaluations of self-compassionate behaviors relate to their level of self-compassion. After completing measures of trait self-compassion and values, participants rated how they would view themselves after behaving in a self-compassionate and self-critical way. Overall, participants associated self-compassion with positive attributes that connote emotional well-being, yet only those who were low in trait self-compassion associated self-compassionate responding with negative attributes that involve low motivation, self-indulgence, low conscientiousness, and poor performance. Participants’ endorsement of basic values was not meaningfully related to their evaluations of self-compassionate vs. self-critical behaviors or to self-compassion scores. We propose that self-compassion might operate as an instrumental value insofar as those high vs. low in self-compassion differ in their beliefs about whether self-compassion affects performance-related outcomes positively or negatively.     

Why is learning to read a hard task for some children?

In this brief review of some of my research on reading disability, I argue that a child’s development into literacy has two major ontogenetic roots, one involving early informal literacy socialization and one related to phonological awareness. Although failure in reading acquisition might be a question of cultural deprivation, the dynamic interaction between genetic dispositions and environment must be acknowledged, especially in a society providing rich sources of print exposure. The crucial transition in literacy development involves a step from implicit to explicit control of the phonemic units of language. When the cipher of the alphabetic system is understood the child is equipped with a powerful instrument for self teaching. A primary source of reading disability is then related to problems of segmenting the speech stream into phonemic units. The poor functioning of the phonological module seems to be a circumscribed deficit not related to general cognitive ability. The causal and reciprocal relationship between phonological awareness and learning to read has been demonstrated in my research over 20 years. Some of these studies are briefly reviewed in this article. The preventive and remedial implications of the findings are rather obvious.     

Why are some people with neurological illness more resilient than others?

The current qualitative study was designed to evaluate the coping strategies of people living with a chronic progressive neurological illness and their carers. The neurological illnesses were Huntington's disease, motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease. Participants included 15 people who showed high levels of adjustment and 15 who showed low levels of adjustment. Participants were selected from an earlier study, to ensure that they satisfied the inclusion criteria for the current study. Interviews were completed to determine the strategies used to cope with the demands of the illness. Participants who demonstrated good adjustment were more likely to draw on social support to provide them with the resources to deal with the illness. In contrast, those who evidenced poor adjustment were more likely to draw on external supports to complete tasks for them. The implications of these findings for people with chronic neurological illnesses and their families are discussed.     

Why do people self-harm?

The accuracy of perceptions about self-harm that are presented in the psychological and psychiatric literature was assessed with a sample of self-harmers. A list of 20 statements containing ten myths and ten accurate statements about self-harm behaviour was incorporated into an internet-based questionnaire. Respondents (n?=?243) rated their extent of agreement with each statement. Factor analysis confirmed the a priori classification of statements as being accurate. Only one item, regarding the relationship of self-harm to previous sexual abuse, did not confirm a priori classification; this statement was considered by self-harmers to be an accurate perception of self-harm. It was concluded that this questionnaire could be a useful aid for group-work training with professionals who are involved in working with people who engage in self-harm.     

Why would people want to travel more with automated cars?

The use of automated vehicles (AVs) may enable drivers to focus on non-driving related activities while travelling and reduce the unwanted efforts of the driving task. This is expected to make using a car more attractive, or at least less unpleasant compared to manually driven vehicles. Consequently, the number and length of car trips may increase. The aim of this study was to identify the main contributors to travelling more by AV.We analysed the L3Pilot project’s pilot site questionnaire data from 359 respondents who had ridden in a conditionally automated car (SAE level 3) either as a driver or as a passenger. The questionnaire queried the respondents’ user experience with the automated driving function, current barriers of travelling by car, previous experience with advanced driving assistance systems, and general priorities in travelling. The answers to these questions were used to predict willingness to travel more or longer trips by AV, and to use AVs on currently undertaken trips. The most predictive subset of variables was identified using Bayesian cumulative ordinal regression with a shrinkage prior (regularised horseshoe).The current study found that conditionally automated cars have a substantial potential to increase travelling by car once they become available. Willingness to perform leisure activities during automated driving, experienced usefulness of the system, and unmet travel needs, which AVs could address by making travelling easier, were the main contributors to expecting to travel more by AV. For using AVs on current trips, leisure activities, trust in AVs, satisfaction with the system, and traffic jams as barriers to current car use were important contributors. In other words, perceived usefulness motivated travelling more by AV and using AVs on current trips, but also other factors were important for using them on current trips. This suggests that one way to limit the growth of traffic with private AVs could be to address currently unmet travel needs with alternative, more sustainable travel modes.     

Why is it easy to control your arms ?

The complexity of our muscular systems may be regarded, not as a complication for the brain, but as a source of variety providing enough easily controlled movement recipes to do most of the things we ordinarily need to do. This simplifies the control task, in that if there are enough ways of moving, a recipe involving just a few of them can usually be found that will approximate any desired movement with little supervision. In particular, the presence of"redundant" degrees of freedom allows us to use ballistic (free swinging) movements, so that physics, rather than computation, accounts for much of trajectory. Computations are required to set up the constraints defining initializing a low-dimensional subsystem in such a way that a satisfactory movement exists. One theme of current research is that these recipes may generated by specifying the parameters of oscillators and spring-like components. We should expect actions to be represented as patchworks of recipes, each working best for some subset of variants of the action.     

Why believe what people say?

The basic alternatives seem to be either a Humean reductionist view that any particular assertion needs backing with inductive evidence for its reliability before it can retionally be believed, or a Reidian criterial view that testimony is intrinscially, though defeasibly, credible, in the absence of evidence against its reliability.Some recent arguments from the constraints on interpreting any linguistic performances as assertions with propositional content have some force against the reductionist view. We thus have reason to accept the criterial view, at least as applied to eyewitness reports. But these considerations do not establish that any rational enquirer must have the concept of other minds or testimony. The logical possibility of the lone enquirer, who uses symbols and thereby expresses some knowledge of his world, remains open — but it is a question we have no need to pronounce upon.The practice of accepting observation-statements is in fact extended to chains of testimonies believed to start in perception or in some other kind of justification, but the arguments for doing this are not so clear.I am indebted for helpful discussions of earlier versions of this paper to audiences at Macquarie University (where I was kindly given research facilities), at the conference of the Australasian Association for Philosophy in Sydney in 1990, at St. Andrews, and also to a referee for this journal.     

Why is working memory related to fluid intelligence?

Nearly 1,000 adults performed a battery of cognitive tests and working memory tasks requiring simultaneous storage and processing of information. Because the amount of to-be-remembered information, or set size, varied randomly across trials, the relation between fluid intelligence and working memory could be examined across different levels of complexity and across successive trials in the working memory tasks. Strong influences of fluid intelligence were apparent in the simplest versions and on the initial trials in the working memory tasks, which suggests that the relation between working memory and fluid intelligence is not dependent on the amount of information that must be maintained, or on processes that occur over the course of performing the tasks.     

Why are some people more susceptible to ingroup threat than others? The importance of a relative extrinsic to intrinsic value orientation

Whereas an individual differences perspective recently pointed to the importance of a relative extrinsic to intrinsic value orientation in the prediction of outgroup attitudes, the intergroup relations perspective stresses the importance of threat. This study investigates the interplay of both perspectives. A scenario study among high-school students showed that only people who attach greater relative importance to extrinsic values react with a negative attitude towards an outgroup that is portrayed as threatening. A longitudinal study among university students then showed that people with a relatively greater extrinsic value orientation are not only more likely to react to threat but also to perceive threat. Specifically, cross-lagged analyses showed that a relatively greater extrinsic value orientation predicted over-time increases in threat perceptions.     

Why are some people more knowledgeable than others? A longitudinal study of knowledge acquisition

The purpose of this study was to investigate correlates of knowledge acquisition within a real-world domain-basketball. The study employed a longitudinal design and involved two sessions, with approximately 2.5 months between sessions. Session 1 occurred near the beginning of the men's college basketball season, and Session 2 occurred after the season. There was an indirect effect of interest in basketball on new basketball knowledge, via exposure to domain-relevant information. In addition, prior basketball knowledge had a strong effect on new basketball knowledge distinct from an influence through basketball exposure. This finding suggests that prior knowledge may provide a framework into which new knowledge can be integrated. By contrast, there was no effect of fluid intelligence on new basketball knowledge. Although somewhat surprising given evidence that this aspect of intelligence may play a role in the acquisition of certain types of knowledge, this finding accords with the view that knowledge is a major determinant of various aspects of cognitive functioning, including learning.     

Why is Cheating Wrong?

Since cheating is obviously wrong, arguments against it (it provides an unfair advantage, it hinders learning) need only be mentioned in passing. But the argument of unfair advantage absurdly takes education to be essentially a race of all against all; moreover, it ignores that many cases of unfair (dis)advantages are widely accepted. On the other hand, the fact that cheating can hamper learning does not mean that punishing cheating will necessarily favour learning, so that this argument does not obviously justify sanctioning cheaters.     

Computer problems: are some people jinxed?

To examine the popular notion that some people are 'jinxed' when using computers 111 undergraduate psychology students were 'jinxed' whilst trying to complete a task over the Internet. No evidence was found to support that notion.     

Why are some moral beliefs perceived to be more objective than others?

Recent research has investigated whether people think of their moral beliefs as objectively true facts about the world, or as subjective preferences. The present research examines variability in the perceived objectivity of different moral beliefs, with respect both to the content of moral beliefs themselves (what they are about), and to the social representation of those moral beliefs (whether other individuals are thought to hold them). It also examines the possible consequences of perceiving a moral belief as objective. With respect to the content of moral beliefs, we find that beliefs about the moral properties of negatively valenced acts are seen as reliably more objective than beliefs about the moral properties of positively valenced acts. With respect to the social representation of moral beliefs, we find that the degree of perceived consensus regarding a moral belief positively influences its perceived objectivity. The present experiments also demonstrate that holding a moral belief to be objective is associated with a more ‘closed’ response in the face of disagreement about it, and with more morally pejorative attributions towards a disagreeing other person.     

Can we explain why some people do and some people do not act on their intentions?

Behavioural theorists have identified attitudes, perceived norms and self-efficacy as the important determinants of people's intentions to engage in a given behaviour. Because intentions predict behaviour, these same variables also account for a considerable amount of the variation in behaviour. Nevertheless, there is often a substantial proportion of the population who do not act on their intentions. While a recently proposed integrative theory of behaviour suggests that these 'failures' are due either to a lack of skills and/or to the presence of environmental constraints, it has also been argued that the determinants of intention may have a direct, as well as in indirect, effect on behaviour. This paper uses data from a longitudinal study (Project RESPECT) to explore the extent to which attitudes, perceived norms and self-efficacy explain why some people do and others do not act on their intentions to engage in a health protective behaviour. Although the data provide further evidence that these three variables account for a significant proportion of the variance in intentions (and behaviour), they perform poorly when predicting behaviour for persons with pre-existing high intentions. It may be reasonable to ask whether a 'new' theory is needed to explain why some people do, and some people do not, act on their intentions.     

Why do people sacrifice to approach rewards versus to avoid costs? Insights from attachment theory

This research provides the first empirical investigation of how attachment orientations contribute to approach and avoidance goals for engaging in sacrifice. Study 1 is a cross‐sectional study of individuals in dating relationships, and Study 2 is a 14‐day daily experience study of dating couples. Results showed that attachment anxiety was associated with a greater frequency of sacrifice and more willingness to sacrifice for approach goals (particularly self‐focused goals) and avoidance goals. Attachment avoidance was associated with a lower frequency of sacrifice, less willingness to sacrifice for approach goals (particularly partner‐focused goals), and more willingness to sacrifice for avoidance goals (both self‐ and partner‐focused). Daily sacrifice goals were also associated with the partner's attachment orientation. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Do people avoid sitting next to someone who is facially disfigured?

Most psychological research on the social effects of facial appearance has compared ‘normal’ with attractive faces whereas little work has been concerned with the possible differences in reactions to disfigured and ‘normal’ faces. Yet many cranio-facial surgeons wish to know whether their disfigured patients are reporting reality when they complain that members of the public avoid or react negatively to them. This study finds that people travelling on a suburban railway significantly avoided sitting next to someone who appeared to have a facial port-wine stain. It is concluded that facially disfigured people's accounts of avoidant behaviour towards them are probably the results of correct perceptions.