Investigating the Relationship Between Psychological Flexibility and Subjective Well-Being with the Mediating Role of Self-Compassion in Students
Keywords:
Psychological flexibility, subjective well-being, self-compassion, studentsAbstract
Purpose: The present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between psychological flexibility and subjective well-being with the mediating role of self-compassion among university students.
Method: This study employed a descriptive-correlational design. The statistical population included all students of Razi University during the 2023–2024 academic year. In this study, 350 male and female students were selected through convenience sampling based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The instruments used in this research included the standardized Psychological Well-Being Scale (Ryff, 1989), the Self-Compassion Scale (Neff, 2003), and the Psychological Flexibility Scale (Bond et al., 2011). Pearson correlation analysis and structural equation modeling were used for data analysis. Data were analyzed using SPSS-26 and AMOS-24 software.
Findings: The results indicated that the conceptual model of the study demonstrated acceptable fit indices within the framework of structural equation modeling. The findings showed that the exogenous and mediating variables jointly predicted 0.53 of the variance in the endogenous variable (R = 0.53). The indirect effect of psychological flexibility on subjective well-being through self-compassion was found to be -0.178, which was statistically significant (p < .001).
Conclusion: The findings of the study suggest that the interaction between the processes of experiential acceptance and self-kindness indicates that subjective well-being is optimized when students are able to process stressful experiences without avoidance or self-criticism while simultaneously adopting a supportive attitude toward themselves. Accordingly, the development of educational programs and university-based interventions aimed at enhancing psychological flexibility and self-compassion may provide an effective pathway for promoting mental health, reducing emotional vulnerability, and improving students’ academic adjustment.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Samaneh Afshanfar (Author); Asieh Moradi; Hashem Jebraieli (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
