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The Unconditional Self-Kindness Scale: Assessing the Ability to Respond with Kindness to Threats to the Self

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Abstract

Despite psychology’s awareness of the benefit of viewing oneself positively, there is a dearth of scales on self-kindness, with one notable example in a subscale of self-compassion. The purpose of this study was to develop and test a unique measure of self-kindness. The measure is called the Unconditional Self-Kindness (USK) scale because it assesses self-kindness in the context of common and potential harmful threats to the self. These threats include (1) being criticized and rejected by another person, (2) failing or making a mistake, and (3) becoming aware of personal flaws and imperfection. A total of 1452 undergraduate participants filled out the USK scale and a range of mental health, risk, and protective factors. The results showed that the USK scale was internally consistent, loaded on a single latent variable, demonstrated test-retest reliability, and was related in the expected directions to the mental health, psychological well-being, and variety of risk and protective factor measures. In addition, the USK scale still predicted several mental health predictors when controlling for protective factors including grit, hope, resilience, self-esteem, and social support. Finally, mean USK scores were significantly higher in men than women and in Native American participants than all other ethnicities and significantly lower in non-Hispanic White participants than all other ethnicities.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131, USA

    Bruce W. Smith, Anne Guzman & Kelly Erickson

Authors
  1. Bruce W. Smith
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  2. Anne Guzman
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  3. Kelly Erickson
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Contributions

BWS: selected measures, analyzed descriptive data and conducted the exploratory factor analyses, wrote introduction and discussion. AG: oversaw all years of data collection and wrote the method section. KE: conducted the confirmatory factor analyses, significantly edited paper drafts, handled all aspect of the revise and resubmit process.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kelly Erickson.

Ethics declarations

IRB Approval, Ethical Approval

The study was approved by the UNM Main Campus Institutional Review Board. There were no adverse events reported. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

All participants read and signed an UNM IRB approved consent form.

Conflict of Interest

Bruce W. Smith declares that he has no conflict of interest. Anne Guzman declares that she has no conflict of interest. Kelly Erickson declares that she has no conflict of interest.

Appendix

Appendix

The Unconditional Self-Kindness Scale

Instructions: Answer these questions as honestly as you can by circling one number on the following scale:

Not at all 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 A Great Deal

  1. 1.

    How much are you patient and tolerant with yourself when you are criticized or rejected by another person?

  2. 2.

    How much are you loving and kind to yourself when you become aware of your personal flaws and imperfections?

  3. 3.

    How much are you patient and tolerant with yourself when you fail or make a mistake?

  4. 4.

    How much are you loving and kind to yourself when you are criticized or rejected by another person?

  5. 5.

    How much are you patient and tolerant with yourself when you become aware of your personal flaws and imperfections?

  6. 6.

    How much are you loving and kind to yourself when you fail or make a mistake?

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Smith, B.W., Guzman, A. & Erickson, K. The Unconditional Self-Kindness Scale: Assessing the Ability to Respond with Kindness to Threats to the Self. Mindfulness 9, 1713–1722 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-018-0912-5

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