Self-Compassion in Iranian Muslims: Relationships With Integrative Self-Knowledge, Mental Health, and Religious Orientation

Abstract

Although a Buddhist construct, self-compassion may have implications for understanding psychological adjustment cross-culturally. In Iranian Muslims, the Self-Compassion Scale correlated positively with integrative self-knowledge, self-esteem, and basic need satisfactions and negatively with depression and anxiety. Negative linkages with depression and anxiety continued to appear in partial correlations controlling for self-esteem, replicating a result previously observed in the United States. Integrative self-knowledge fully or partially mediated all self-compassion relationships with psychological adjustment. Integrative self-knowledge also became even more predictive of self-compassion at higher levels of an intrinsic religious orientation. These data further confirmed the cross-cultural significance of self-compassion and supported the suggestion that Muslim psychological adjustment is enhanced through sincere religious efforts to get closer to God through self-knowledge.