خوددلسوزی به عنوان یک تعدیل کننده رابطه بین خستگی مفرط علمی و سلامت روانی در دانشجویان دانشگاه سایبری کره ای

Abstracts The moderating effect of self-compassion was examined in the relationship between academic burden and psychological health. The participants were students (N = 350) from a cyber university in Korea. At the beginning of the fall 2011 semester, the participants were surveyed using items from the academic burn-out, self-compassion, depression, and psychological well-being measures. Multiple regression analysis showed that self-compassion moderated the relationship between academic burn-out and psychological well-being. And self-compassion also moderated the relationship between academic burn-out and depression. This study presents an empirical framework for the research through investigating the relationship among academic burden, self-compassion, and psychological health for cyber university students.

. Introduction College life has many factors challenging students’ psychological well-being, demanding that they manage academic goals as well as their emotional reactions to both academic success and frustration (Schneiderman et al., 2005 and Towbes and Cohen, 1996). Besides traditional learning, distance education courses such as e-learning have recently become widespread and are meeting the needs of many adult learners. Korea’s cyber universities, which started with nine universities and 6,220 students in 2001, are now developing at an incredible rate, awarding about 92,188 undergraduate degrees in February of 2010 (Korean Ministry of Education, Science, & Technology, 2010). Now a total of 21 cyber universities began to establish their identities and get to obtain legal status as higher educational organizations. The 54.7% of the Korean cyber university undergraduate students are adult learners in their thirties and forties. And the majority of the students (70.4%) have jobs Ministry of Education, Science (2010). Therefore, these adult students suffer from various psychological distress and burdens especially inherent in both work and academic pursuit. Many psychologists have endeavored to find factors buffering various forms of psychological distress. Recently, interest in the construct of self-compassion has been fueled by a larger trend towards integrating Buddhist constructs such as mindfulness with western psychological approaches. According to the definition proposed by Neff, 2003a and Neff, 2003b, self-compassion entails three main components which overlap and mutually interact: self-kindness versus self-judgment, feelings of common humanity versus isolation, and mindfulness versus over-identification. The construct of self-compassion offers an alternative approach to psychological well-being. Self-compassion can be a powerful predictor of psychological well-being and mental health (Neff, 2003b). It shows positive association with markers of psychological well-being, such as self-acceptance, life satisfaction, social connectedness, self-esteem, mindfulness, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, reflective and affective wisdom, curiosity and exploration in life, and happiness and optimism (Neff, 2003b). It has also demonstrated negative associations with self-criticism, depression, anxiety, rumination, thought suppression, and neurotic perfectionism (Kirkpatrick, 2005). Increased self-compassion has been found to predict enhanced psychological health over time (Gilbert & Procter, 2006), and to explain reduced stress following participation in a widely implemented stress-reduction program (Shapiro, Astin, Bishop, & Cordova, 2005). Self-compassion has been found to be positively related to mastery goals and negatively associated with performance goals, a relationship that was mediated by the lesser fear of failure and greater perceived competence. Self-compassion has also been found to have a positive correlation with academic success (Neff, Hsieh, & Dejitterat, 2005). In addition to these results, self-compassion can predict emotional and cognitive reactions to negative events in everyday life. It buffers people against negative self-feelings when imagining distressing social events, and moderates negative emotions after receiving ambivalent feedback, particularly for those who have low self-esteem. Researchers found that self-compassion predicted emotional and cognitive reactions to negative events in everyday life and also that self-compassion buffered people against negative self-feelings when imagining distressing social events (Leary, Tate, Adams, Allen, & Hancock, 2007). Leary et al. (2007) suggest that self-compassion attenuates people’s reactions to negative events. Findings using Neff’s self-compassion scale with college students (Neff, Kirkpatrick, & Rude, 2007) suggest that it is a strong and unique predictor of well-being, negatively related to depression and anxiety, and positively related to wisdom, happiness, optimism, extraversion and conscientiousness. Taken together, our current study goals were to introduce self-compassion as a factor that might contribute to cyber university undergraduate students’ well-being. We conducted this study to address whether students’ psychological health would be moderated by self-compassion when faced with academic burn-out. Because the research on self-compassion is relatively new, studies that examine the relationships between self-compassion and psychological variables, academic burn-out, and psychological well-being are needed. The main reason for using self-compassion as a moderator in this study is that recent reviews of the research literature suggest that self-esteem may not be the panacea it is made out to be (Baumeister et al., 2003 and Crocker and Park, 2004). For example, self-esteem appears to be the result rather than the cause of improved academic performance (Baumeister et al., 2003). Another reason is that the concept of self-compassion is relatively new and study of this issue is in its infancy in Korea. The aim in this research was to explore the moderating effects of self-compassion on the relationship between academic burn-out and psychological health. Being a supposedly stable cognitive and emotional orientation towards negative life experiences (Neff, 2003a and Neff, 2003b), self-compassion will reduce negative effects of academic burn-out on psychological health. Therefore, it is hypothesized that self-compassion may moderate the relationship between academic burn-out and psychological health. As indicators of psychological health, the authors used the widespread concepts of psychological well-being and depressive symptoms.

4. Results The correlations among study variables are presented in Table 2. As expected, inter-correlations showed that academic burn-out was negatively associated with total psychological well-being (r = −.37, p < .01) and positively associated with depression (r = .38, p < .01). Self-compassion was positively associated with psychological well-being (r = .63, p < .01) and negatively associated with depression (r = −.51, p < .01). Table 2. Correlation among related variables. 1 2 3 4 1 MBI (academic burn-out) 1 2 SCS total −.37⁎⁎ 1 3 PWB −.37⁎⁎ .63⁎⁎ 1 4 BDI .38⁎⁎ −.51⁎⁎ −.45⁎⁎ 1 Mean 38.89 89.30 80.56 6.85 SD 14.25 16.02 10.43 6.46 Note: SCS, Self-Compassion Scale; PWB, Psychological Well-Being; BDI, Beck Depression Inventory. ⁎⁎ p < .01. Table options Preliminary analyses indicated non-significant gender, age, and occupation for psychological well-being and depression. Therefore, these demographic variables were excluded in regression analyses. The statistically significant results of multiple regression analyses are presented in Table 3 and Table 4. A hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to test the hypothesis that self-compassion could moderate the association between academic burn-out and emotional well-being. As results revealed, after entering the interaction term (moderating effect of self-compassion) in step 3, in the link between academic burn-out and psychological well-being, there was a .082 increase in R2 (B = .276, p < .01)(see Table 3). Furthermore, in the relationship between academic burn-out and depression, a .04 increase in R2 was indicated (B = −.485, p < .01 (see Table 4). So there was significant interaction between academic burn-out and emotional well-being and the results showed that sequentially 8.2% and 4.0% of the variance in psychological well-being and depression could be attributable to the moderating role of self-compassion in this relationship. Table 3. Hierarchical regression analysis for moderating effect of self-compassion on the relationships between academic burn-out and psychological well-being. Variables B R2 R2 change F Step 1 Academic burn-out −.378 .082 .082 31.36⁎⁎ Step 2 Self-compassion .450 .370 .288 156.79⁎⁎ Step 3 Academic burn-out × self compassion .276 .452 .082 68.04⁎⁎ ⁎⁎ p < .01. Table options Table 4. Hierarchical regression analysis for moderating effect of self-compassion on the relationships between academic burn-out and depression. Variables B R2 R2 change F Step 1 Academic burn-out .726 .139 .139 55.30⁎⁎ Step 2 Self-compassion −.185 .295 .156 71.38⁎⁎ Step 3 Academic burn-out × self compassion −.485 .335 .04 49.26⁎⁎ ∗p < .05. ⁎⁎ p < .01. Table options To illustrate the Academic burn out × self-compassion interaction for psychological well-being, we plotted the regression of PWB on Academic burn-out at high and low levels of self-compassion (see Fig. 1). As Fig. 1 shows, the relationship between academic burn-out and psychological well-being was more strongly positive for high levels of self-compassion. As Fig. 2 shows, although the interactions were significant across two levels of self-compassion, the effects of academic burn-out on BDI were especially pronounced for students with low levels of self-compassion. The moderating effect of SCS on the relationship between academic burn-out (MBI) ... Fig. 1. The moderating effect of SCS on the relationship between academic burn-out (MBI) and PWB. Figure options The moderating effect of SCS on the relationship between academic burn-out (MBI) ... Fig. 2. The moderating effect of SCS on the relationship between academic burn-out (MBI) and depression.