Does Psychoeducation Help People to Respond to Goal Lapses With Self-Compassion?

Despite research indicating that responding with self-compassion to lapses in goal pursuit can help people to achieve their goals, there is evidence that people often struggle to respond with self-compassion when it would benefit them. One reason is that people may not be familiar with the concept of self-compassion or may think negatively of self-compassion. We propose that providing information about self-compassion and its benefits can help people to respond with self-compassion to lapses in goal pursuit. To test this, we randomly assigned participants to a self-compassion psychoeducation condition or control condition and then tested whether they responded with self-compassion to a recalled lapse. The results suggested that, although psychoeducation seemed to influence participants’ beliefs about self-compassion, there was no evidence that psychoeducation increased self-compassionate responding. This finding highlights the need to develop additional strategies to help people to translate knowledge about self-compassion into self-compassionate responses to lapses and difficulties.

The Barriers to Being Self-Compassionate Despite the benefits of self-compassion for goal pursuit, there is emerging evidence that adopting a self-compassionate mindset can be challenging for some people.Specifically, people may be unaware of the concept of self-compassion.For example, Pauley and McPherson (2010) interviewed people who were diagnosed with either depression or anxiety and found that none of them could recall being self-compassionate (see also Kelly et al., 2021 for similar findings on a sample of people with anorexia nervosa).Similar barriers to being self-compassionate were found in other interview studies conducted with non-clinical samples, with participants highlighting that being self-compassionate was foreign for them, and that they did not know how to start becoming more self-compassionate (Campion & Glover, 2017;Jeziorek & Riazi, 2022).
Even if people are aware of self-compassion as an alternative way of responding to difficulties, they may not consider being self-compassionate, perhaps because their default response is selfcriticism.Indeed, research suggests that people tend, and sometimes even prefer, to be self-critical when facing difficulties (Bayir & Lomas, 2016;Kelly et al., 2021;Pauley & McPherson, 2010;Tobin & Dunkley, 2021).For example, in a qualitative study conducted by Bayir and Lomas (2016), participants reported that they often found it hard to accept and embrace their failures, and tended to downplay their accomplishments and blame themselves for their mistakes.Furthermore, they saw value in responding with self-criticism, such that they believed that being self-critical was key for improving themselves and achieving their goals, despite evidence that self-criticism has a detrimental effect on goal pursuit (e.g.Powers et al., 2007Powers et al., , 2012)).
Additionally, prior work suggests that people may not consider being self-compassionate because they hold negative beliefs about self-compassion (Bayir & Lomas, 2016;Chwyl et al., 2020;Kelly et al., 2021;Robinson et al., 2016;Simpson et al., 2022).Specifically, Simpson et al. (2022) measured the extent to which participants believed that being self-compassionate would be difficult and then instructed participants to read a hypothetical scenario in which they were selfcompassionate before asking them to evaluate this hypothetical self.They found that participants who believed that being self-compassionate would be difficult were more likely to associate their hypothetical self-compassionate self with negative personality traits, such as being insecure, arrogant and careless, as well as negative feelings, such as feeling anxious, unhappy and shameful.Using a similar methodology, Robinson et al. (2016) found that participants with lower levels of trait self-compassion were more likely to associate their (hypothetical) self-compassionate self with traits and characteristics indicating poor performance such as being non-ambitious, irresponsible, lazy and a failure, compared to those high in trait self-compassion.
Based on the work described above, Biskas et al. (2022) conducted a large-scale prospective study to provide a direct test of whether negative beliefs about self-compassion explain why people may struggle to respond with self-compassion to goal lapses.Biskas et al. assessed participants' affective and cognitive evaluations of being self-compassionate as well as how participants evaluate people who respond to difficulties with self-compassion or self-criticism.Next, they assessed participants' willingness to respond with self-compassion to a recalled and future lapse in pursuing a personal goal and whether they responded with self-compassion.They found that participants who had more negative affective and cognitive attitudes towards selfcompassion as well as evaluated the typical person who responds with self-compassion more negatively (and people who respond with self-criticism more positively), were less willing to respond with self-compassion to the lapses and, in turn, less likely to actually respond with selfcompassion.

Could Psychoeducation Promote Self-Compassion?
The aforementioned work provides evidence that some people struggle to respond with selfcompassion to goal lapses because they are unaware of self-compassion as a way of responding, prefer to respond with self-criticism, and/or hold negative beliefs about self-compassion.Given this, strategies aiming to address these barriers to being self-compassionate are needed to help people to respond with self-compassion when needed and reap the associated benefits.The current study proposed and tested such a strategy.Specifically, we investigated whether providing information about self-compassion and its benefits (i.e.psychoeducation) could help people to respond with self-compassion to lapses in goal pursuit.
Theory and research support our proposition.In particular, the information deficit model suggests that people are often sceptical towards engaging in a novel behaviour (e.g.being selfcompassionate) because they lack knowledge about this behaviour and its benefits (e.g.Bak, 2001;Bidwell, 2016;Sturgis & Allum, 2004).To address this knowledge gap, people apply heuristics derived from limited personal experiences or lay theories (e.g.self-compassion is a sign of weakness) resulting in distorted and negative attitudes towards the target behaviour (e.g.selfcompassion is harmful).Therefore, according to the information deficit model, providing information about the target behaviour, including evidence demonstrating its benefits, through psychoeducation could persuade people to change their existing attitudes and make it more likely that they will perform the behaviour.The Information-Motivation-Behavioural Skills (IMB) model provides further support for this contention as it also posits that providing information and knowledge about a target behaviour may influence behaviour, especially when complicated or novel behavioural skills for performing the behaviour are not required (Fisher & Fisher, 1992;Fisher et al., 2003Fisher et al., , 2006)).
Research provides evidence consistent with the information deficit and IMB models.Specifically, psychoeducation is commonly used to help people with diverse mental disorders such as schizophrenia, anxiety and depression by making them more aware of their condition and effective ways to respond to their symptoms (Alhadidi et al., 2020;Donker et al., 2009).Psychoeducation can also be effective for non-clinical issues.For example, research has shown that psychoeducation reduces irrational beliefs, stress and worry (Dash et al., 2015;Ulusoy & Duy, 2013;Van Daele et al., 2012).In particular, a meta-analysis of 17 studies demonstrated that interventions providing information about stress and diverse techniques to respond to stress effectively can reduce worry for people of different gender, age and ethnicity (Van Daele et al., 2012).Additional research suggests that psychoeducation can influence personal attitudes.For example, Selensky and Carels (2021) found that a short video designed to raise awareness of the negative effects of weight stigma changed people's attitudes towards overweight people and themselves.As another example, Taylor-Rodgers and Batterham (2014) found that participants who received a 3-week psychoeducational intervention raising awareness about mental health exhibited more positive attitudes towards seeking professional help compared to those assigned in the control group.Thus, consistent with the information deficit model, these studies suggest that psychoeducation can influence people's attitudes.

The Present Research
Given that people often are unaware of self-compassion or hold negative beliefs about being selfcompassionate, we hypothesized that psychoeducation could help people to respond with selfcompassion to a lapse in pursuing their goals.To test this, we assessed participants' state levels of self-compassion before randomly assigning them to a self-compassion psychoeducation or control condition.Next, we asked participants to write about a lapse in pursuing a personal goal and subsequently prompted them to respond with self-compassion to this lapse.Finally, we assessed participants' state levels of self-compassion to assess whether they responded to the lapse with self-compassion.We hypothesized that participants in the self-compassion psychoeducation condition would report increased state self-compassion after being prompted to respond with selfcompassion to the lapse compared to participants in the control condition.

Method
Participants G*Power (Faul et al., 2009) was used to identify the sample size required to detect a small-tomedium sized (f = .20)interaction between time and the psychoeducation manipulation on state self-compassion.The power analysis suggested that 168 participants would provide 90% power at a significance level of α = .05,with two groups and four measurements.Participants were recruited via an email to a list of research volunteers at a large University in the UK, adverts on the researchers' social media networks, and websites that advertise online psychological research.We recruited 176 participants, from whom we excluded those who dropped out before completing the prompt to respond with self-compassion (N = 10), spent longer than 3 SD above the mean time to complete the study (N = 3), and did not respond or did not provide relevant responses to the goal lapse writing task or self-compassionate responding prompt (N = 4).The final sample consisted of 159 participants (105 women, 53 men, 1 other) aged between 18 and 68 years (M = 24.25,SD = 10.00), who were predominantly students (84.9%) and White (76.7%).

Procedure and Materials
Participants completed the study online and there was not any time restriction when completing the writing tasks (all materials are available on Appendix A).After collecting demographic information (e.g.gender, age and ethnicity), participants completed measures assessing trait and state levels of self-compassion.Next, we randomly allocated participants to a self-compassion psychoeducation or a control condition.Participants in the self-compassion psychoeducation condition were provided with information about what self-compassion is and research showing its benefits on well-being and goal pursuit in comparison to self-criticism.This information was textbased and consisted of four paragraphs (211 words in total) presented in one page (see Appendix A).Afterwards, on a separate page, participants were asked 'what do you personally think is the most important benefit of being self-compassionate'? with them writing 23 words on average in their responses.This question had three aims: (i) to make the psychoeducation more engaging and participants more active, (ii) to explore whether the psychoeducation influenced participants' beliefs about self-compassion and (iii) to check whether participants completed the psychoeducation with the required attention.Participants in the control condition were simply instructed to recall and write about 'at least one of your everyday, routine actions'.
Following the manipulation, participants were asked to think and write about a recent lapse that they faced in pursuing a personal goal.Specifically, they were first provided with examples of goal lapses that they may have experienced (e.g.'not doing something that you know you should have' or situations where 'you could have said or did something that you regretted afterwards').Afterwards, participants were instructed to 'recall what happened and how you were feeling in this situation as clearly as you can' and then 'describe it in as much detail as needed so that we can understand what happened'.The instructions were text-based and consisted of three paragraphs (198 words in total) presented in one page (see Appendix A).Participants also indicated their feelings towards the lapse using a 5-point scale (1 = very sad face to 5 = very happy face; M = 3.77, SD = 1.17).Next, participants were instructed to respond with self-compassion to the lapse using a previously validated instruction set (Sirois et al., 2019; see Appendix A).In particular, participants were asked to recall the lapse and 'write a couple of sentences in the space below expressing this kindness, understanding, and balanced perspective to yourself'.Following the prompt, participants completed the measure assessing state levels of self-compassion again.
Trait Self-Compassion.Participants completed the short form of the Self-Compassion Scale (Raes et al., 2011), which consists of 12 items tapping into the three bipolar dimensions of selfcompassion: (1) self-kindness versus self-judgement (e.g.'I try to be understanding and patient towards those aspects of my personality I don't like'), (2) common humanity versus isolation (e.g.'I try to see my failings as part of the human condition') and ( 3) mindfulness versus overidentification (e.g.'When I'm feeling down I tend to obsess and fixate on everything that's wrong').Participants indicated how often they behave in the described way (1 = almost never to 5 = almost always).Prior work has indicated that these three bipolar dimensions are highly intercorrelated and are thus best explained by a single higher order dimension of self-compassion (Raes et al., 2011).Additionally, research has indicated that the scale has high internal reliability (α ≥ .84)and overall strong convergent, predictive and divergent validity (Raes, 2011;Raes et al., 2011; see also Neff, 2003a;2016).Responses were averaged to compute an overall score reflecting higher levels of trait self-compassion (α = .85,M = 3.01, SD = .74).
State Self-Compassion.Participants completed a scale assessing state levels of self-compassion (Sirois et al., 2019) derived from items from the dispositional Self-Compassion Scale (Neff, 2003a).Specifically, participants responded to five questions preceded by the stem: 'Right now…': 'How kind do you feel towards yourself'?'How accepting do you feel towards yourself'?'How critical do you feel towards yourself'?'How much do you see your weaknesses as part of being human'?and 'How much are you trying to take a balanced view of the situation'?Participants were asked to respond on a 7-point scale (1 = not at all to 7 = very much).Previous research has shown that the scale has adequate internal reliability (α = .76)and is correlated with the dispositional Self-Compassion Scale (r = .64;Sirois et al., 2019).Respective items were averaged to compute levels of state self-compassion before the manipulation (α = .72,M = 4.58, SD = .90)and after the manipulation (α = .78,M = 4.92, SD = .91).

Preliminary Analyses
Randomization Check.To check that trait levels of self-compassion were equivalent between the self-compassion psychoeducation and control conditions, we conducted an independent samples t test.This analysis indicated that there was not a significant difference in trait self-compassion between participants in the self-compassion psychoeducation condition (M = 3.01, SD = .74)and those in the control condition (M = 3.01, SD = .75),t (157) = À.03, p = .977,which suggests that randomization was successful.

Main Analyses
The Effects of Psychoeducation on State Self-Compassion.To test whether psychoeducation resulted in any change in state self-compassion, we conducted a 2-between (condition: Psychoeducation vs. control) x 2-within (time: Before vs. after the manipulation) mixed ANOVA with levels of state self-compassion as the dependent variable.This analysis revealed no main effect of condition, F (1, 157) = .79,p = .376,η 2 = .005,but a significant main effect of time, F (1, 157) = 29.61,p < .001,η 2 = .159.State levels of self-compassion were higher after the manipulation (M = 4.92, SD = .91)than before the manipulation (M = 4.58, SD = .90).The interaction between condition and time was not significant, F (1, 157) = 1.80, p = .182,η 2 = .011,whichtogether with the nonsignificant main effect of conditionsuggests that psychoeducation did not promote selfcompassionate responding to goal lapses.

Supplementary Analyses
Additionally, we explored whether the psychoeducation influenced participants' beliefs about self-compassion by examining their responses to the self-compassion psychoeducation task.Specifically, two coders independently categorized participants' responses to the question asking what they thought is the most important benefit of being self-compassionate.Coders identified whether participants' responses (i) reflected an understanding of self-compassion and/or its benefits or (ii) did not align with the psychoeducation.There was a high level of agreement between coders (Cohen's k = .70,p < .001)and disagreements were resolved with discussion.These analyses indicated that the vast majority of participants (N = 83, 95%) understood what selfcompassion is and mentioned at least one positive of being self-compassionate, such as that selfcompassion 'increases or/and maintains good well-being' and 'helps someone who is trying to achieve a goal stay on track'. 1

Discussion
Prior work has shown that people often struggle to respond with self-compassion to difficulties partly because they are not aware of self-compassion or hold negative beliefs about selfcompassion.Given this, we examined whether educating people about self-compassion and its benefits could help them to respond with self-compassion.However, although psychoeducation seemed to influence participants' beliefs about self-compassion, our findings provided no evidence that psychoeducation made it more likely that people would respond with self-compassion to goal lapses.
One possible explanation for the finding that psychoeducation did not promote selfcompassionate responding is that the beliefs that people hold about self-compassion are resistant to change.This seems unlikely as participants' responses to the psychoeducation task suggested that the psychoeducation helped participants to understand self-compassion and appreciate its benefits.However, existing literature suggests that people tend to preserve their beliefs even after receiving information and evidence that contradicts them (Cohen et al., 2000;Lord et al., 1979), with this tendency being stronger for beliefs that are long-standing and related to one's core values and self-concept (Pomerantz et al., 1995;Zuwerink & Devine, 1996).Beliefs about self-compassion are likely long-standing as evidence suggests that people form their beliefs about self-compassion throughout their life starting from an early age.For example, prior work suggests that people who are raised in an insecure and stressful environment and experience continuous criticism from their parents have fewer examples of compassion to draw upon and are more likely to favour and adopt a self-critical mindset (Bayir & Lomas, 2016;Gilbert, 2005;Irons et al., 2006;Neff & McGehee, 2010).Being self-critical when facing difficulties is also consistent with societal norms about being tough-minded to the extent that people may even feel the need to get permission from others before showing compassion towards themselves (Campion & Glover, 2017).Together, the above suggests that long-standing beliefs about self-compassion may be hard to change and the changes that we observed in the present research may have only been transient and/or not sufficiently substantive to lead to changes in responses.
An alternative explanation for the finding that psychoeducation did not promote selfcompassionate responding is that understanding and appreciating the benefits of selfcompassion may not be enough to help people respond with self-compassion to difficulties.Indeed, theory and research suggest that there are multiple barriers to being self-compassionate.For example, the IMB model posits that whether people will perform a target behaviour (i.e.selfcompassionate responding) is determined by the extent to which they are motivated to act and possess the required behavioural skills for effective action, in addition to the information and knowledge that are relevant to the behaviour (Fisher & Fisher, 1992;Fisher et al., 2003Fisher et al., , 2006)).Motivation, according to this model, is influenced by the attitudes that people hold towards the target behaviour and the perceived social support that they have to perform the behaviour.Behavioural skills focus on people' objective abilities and perceived self-efficacy regarding performing the behaviour.Consistent with this theory, research has indicated that attitudes, norms and self-efficacy with respect to self-compassionate responding can determine whether people will respond with self-compassion to difficulties (e.g.Biskas et al., 2022;Campion & Glover, 2017).Therefore, interventions may need to strengthen motivation and behavioural skills to respond with self-compassion alongside knowledge about self-compassion as provided by psychoeducation.
Even if people do have positive beliefs about self-compassion and are willing to be selfcompassionate, they may still struggle to be self-compassionate at the critical moment because they experience a problem with enactment (Biskas et al., 2022).On this basis, an alternativeor additionalapproach to help people respond with self-compassion might be to tackle the difficulties that people encounter translating their willingness to be self-compassionate into action.This might be achieved by prompting participants to form if-then plans (known also as implementation intentions Gollwitzer, 1999) that establish a link between a situation and a planned behaviour (e.g.'If I experience a lapse in pursuing my goal, then I will respond with selfcompassion').Research has shown that forming if-then plans significantly increases the likelihood that the intended action ensues (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).Thus, this may be a strategy that future interventions could incorporate to promote self-compassionate responding for people who may be unfamiliar with self-compassion, hold negative beliefs about self-compassion, and/or experience difficulties enacting self-compassionate responding.

Limitations and Future Directions
The findings of this study should be interpreted in the context of several limitations.First, we did not directly assess participants' beliefs about self-compassion.Although coding of participants' responses to the psychoeducation task provided some evidence that the psychoeducation was effective at endorsing positive beliefs about self-compassion, future research should consider directly assessing these beliefs either with explicit measures (see Biskas et al., 2022) or implicit measures (see Vantomme et al., 2005) to address any concerns about social desirability.Furthermore, the psychoeducation manipulation was brief and administered online, which may have limited its effectiveness.A meta-analysis of 19 studies examining the effects of different selfcompassion interventions on self-criticism demonstrated that longer interventions typically lead to greater reductions in self-criticism (Wakelin et al., 2022).This suggests that a longer and more intensive self-compassion psychoeducation could yield stronger effects on beliefs about selfcompassion and/or self-compassionate responding.Similarly, delivering psychoeducation via face-to-face interaction, audio-visual aids (e.g.brochures, posters or videos), and/or in-depth discussion might further enhance its effectiveness (Alfonsson et al., 2017); as might psychoeducation that affords participants a more active role in the process (e.g.problem solving, selfassessment tests and homework tasks).Future research might usefully compare different types of psychoeducation for self-compassion in a factorial design, although we reiterate that the psychoeducation employed in the present research did achieve its goal in the sense that participants who received psychoeducation were more knowledgeable and had more positive beliefs about self-compassion than participants that did not receive psychoeducation, at least in the immediate wake of the manipulation.Therefore, the primary message from our research is that (even effective) psychoeducation needs to be augmented by additional strategies to help people to translate knowledge about self-compassion into self-compassionate responses to goal lapses and difficulties.
Finally, the present research did not consider variables that may influence the effect of psychoeducation on self-compassionate responding.For example, previous research has shown that people with higher levels of perfectionistic concerns, a dimension of perfectionism which is characterized by very high expectations, harsh self-criticism and excessive preoccupation with the expectations that others have of them (Sirois & Molnar, 2016), tend to hold more negative beliefs about self-compassion and, because of this, struggle to respond with self-compassion to lapses (Biskas et al., 2022).Given this, people high in perfectionistic concerns, or other personality traits that are characterized by intense self-criticism (e.g.habitual worrying, contingent self-worth, depression), might struggle to benefit from receiving a self-compassion psychoeducational intervention.Future research might therefore measure such personality traits and investigate whether they moderate the effect of self-compassion psychoeducation on outcomes.

Conclusion
Existing research has demonstrated that people often struggle to respond with self-compassion to difficulties and thus do not experience its benefits for goal pursuit and well-being.This is partly because people may be unfamiliar with self-compassion and/or hold negative beliefs about selfcompassion.On this basis, the present research examined whether educating people about selfcompassion can help them to respond with self-compassion to goal lapses.However, although psychoeducation appeared to influence participants' beliefs about self-compassion, the findings provided no evidence that psychoeducation promoted responding with self-compassion to lapses.This finding highlights the gap between knowledge and action and stresses the need to develop additional strategies to help people to translate knowledge about self-compassion into selfcompassionate responses to goal lapses and difficulties.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.