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Abstract

Mindfulness and self-compassion have played a central role in recent mental health promotion efforts, with interventions demonstrating beneficial effects, both by reducing psychological ill-being and enhancing psychological well-being, across diverse populations and settings. However, these constructs face conceptual ambiguities, and fundamental questions about outcome specificity and underlying change mechanisms remain. This dissertation will address important research gaps pertaining to the examination of mindfulness and self-compassion across different conceptualizations—as practices, interventions, predictors, and mechanisms of change—through three empirical studies with diverse samples and methodologies. This work aims to contribute to a clearer understanding of when these approaches yield specific versus broad effects and through which processes change occurs in non-clinical populations.

To this end, in Chapters 2 and 3 of this dissertation, I present findings of two complementary randomized controlled trials that examine specific and broad effects of two mental health promotion interventions designed for healthy adults of different durations and delivery modes. More specifically, Chapter 2 evaluates a brief online, self-guided self-compassion training compared to an active control in a German convenience sample (N = 200; 85.5% female; Mage = 30 years; range 18-69 years) with a 4-week follow-up. Findings indicate similar improvements in self-compassion, self-criticism, perfectionism, and psychological well-being across both conditions, with self-compassion-specific training effects emerging only for highly self-critical individuals.

Chapter 3 examines an 8-week in-person, trainer-led socioemotional competence training targeting stress management and social competences in younger and older German adults (N = 166; 75.2% female; Mage = 46.26 years; range 19-39 and 50-78 years). Compared to a waitlist control group, specific effects only emerged on directly trained outcomes (i.e., mindfulness, perceived stress). They did, however, not spill over to broader domains, such as self-compassion and other indicators of emotional and social functioning. Still, most training effects persisted across 3- and 12-month follow-up.

Chapters 4 and 5 focus on potential mechanisms of mindfulness and self-compassion, examining state-trait relationships and self-referential processes more closely. Building on the same dataset as the study presented in Chapter 3, results of Chapter 4 revealed that despite significant improvements in state and trait indicators, state mindfulness changes did not predict trait-level changes in mindfulness, self-compassion, and perceived stress.

Chapter 5 presents data from a binational longitudinal study (NT1 = 615; NT2 = 310; 51.5% female; age range 18–84 years) on the relationship of mindfulness and self-compassion with self-evaluative processes. Results demonstrate that both mindfulness and self-compassion predicted reduced comparison frequency and more favorable comparison outcomes but not perceived comparison utility. These findings point to potential differences in self-referential processes, that is, differences in how more mindful and self-compassionate people perceive and relate to self-relevant information.

This systematic investigation underlines that mindfulness and self-compassion interventions yield both specific and broad effects and that intervention framing and design may affect the outcome specificity. Furthermore, the dissertation highlights the importance of distinguishing between actual state or trait change and changes in self-referential processes. Collectively, these findings underscore the need for precision-oriented approaches that consider individual characteristics, intervention framing, and the complex interplay between behavioral change and self-perception in future mental health promotion efforts.