Kirschner Hans, Kuyken Willem, Wright Kim, Roberts Henrietta, Brejcha Claire, Karl Anke
Mood Disorder Centre, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter.
Institute of Psychology, Otto-von-Guericke University.
Clin Psychol Sci. 2019 May;7(3):545-565. doi: 10.1177/2167702618812438. Epub 2019 Feb 6.
Self-compassion and its cultivation in psychological interventions are associated with improved mental health and well-being. However, the underlying processes for this are not well understood. We randomly assigned 135 participants to study the effect of two short-term self-compassion exercises on self-reported-state mood and psychophysiological responses compared to three control conditions of negative (rumination), neutral, and positive (excitement) valence. Increased self-reported-state self-compassion, affiliative affect, and decreased self-criticism were found after both self-compassion exercises and the positive-excitement condition. However, a psychophysiological response pattern of reduced arousal (reduced heart rate and skin conductance) and increased parasympathetic activation (increased heart rate variability) were unique to the self-compassion conditions. This pattern is associated with effective emotion regulation in times of adversity. As predicted, rumination triggered the opposite pattern across self-report and physiological responses. Furthermore, we found partial evidence that physiological arousal reduction and parasympathetic activation precede the experience of feeling safe and connected.
自我同情及其在心理干预中的培养与心理健康和幸福感的改善有关。然而，其背后的过程尚未得到充分理解。我们将135名参与者随机分组，以研究两种短期自我同情练习与消极（反刍）、中性和积极（兴奋）效价的三种对照条件相比，对自我报告的状态情绪和心理生理反应的影响。在自我同情练习和积极兴奋条件后，均发现自我报告的状态自我同情、亲和情感增加，自我批评减少。然而，自我同情条件下独有的心理生理反应模式是唤醒降低（心率和皮肤电导率降低）和副交感神经激活增加（心率变异性增加）。这种模式与逆境时期有效的情绪调节有关。正如预期的那样，反刍在自我报告和生理反应中引发了相反的模式。此外，我们发现部分证据表明，生理唤醒降低和副交感神经激活先于感到安全和有联系的体验。
