Kent Kowalski (Saskatchewan); Catherine Sabiston (McGill);
Peter Crocker (UBC); Whitney Sedgwick (UBC); & Jessica Tracy (UBC)
Français
Sport Canada, along with the Canadian government, has identified the need for increased sport participation in Canada, particularly among children and youth. To help accomplish this objective, many youth sport programs in Canada emphasize the development of self-esteem through sport and physical activity. However, self-compassion has been proposed as an alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude towards the self and has been shown to be related to thoughts, feelings, and behaviors differently than self-esteem. Self-compassion involves a warm and non-judgmental understanding of the self rather than a belittling of pain or harsh self-criticism. Self-compassion might be particularly relevant to sport because one challenge that limits sport participation for many young women is feeling evaluated on their performance and/or body image. Most relevant to our research program is that thinking about how one is being evaluated, or might be evaluated, by others in achievement domains (such as sport) can produce self-conscious emotions (e.g., guilt, shame, pride). Shame can be especially devastating, as it arises from a negative evaluation of the entire self and often leads to withdrawal and avoidance of settings in which shame is experienced. The objective of our proposed research program is to better understand young women athletes' experiences of self-conscious emotions (i.e., guilt, shame, pride), and the role of self-compassion in their emotional experiences. Ultimately our goal is to (a) provide evidence as to the relevance of the self-conscious emotions to young women athletes, and (b) support the development of self-compassion, in addition to self-esteem, as a worthwhile goal when working with young women in sport to both enhance and increase their sport participation.
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