Self-Compassion as a Facet of Neuroticism? A Reply to the Comments of Neff, Tóth-Király, and Colosimo (2018)
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
Authors
In this paper, we respond to comments by Neff et al. (2018) made about our finding that the negative dimensions of self-compassion were redundant with facets of neuroticism (rs ≥ 0.85; Pfattheicher et al., 2017) and not incrementally valid. We first provide epistemological guidance for establishing psychological constructs, namely, three hurdles that new constructs must pass: theoretically and empirically sound measurement, discriminant validity, and incremental validity—and then apply these guidelines to the self-compassion scale. We then outline that the critique of Neff et al. (2018) is contestable. We question their decisions concerning data-analytic methods that help them to circumvent instead of passing the outlined hurdles. In a reanalysis of the data provided by Neff et al. (2018), we point to several conceptual and psychometric problems and conclude that self-compassion does not overcome the outlined hurdles. Instead, we show that our initial critique of the self-compassion scale holds and that its dimensions are best considered facets of neuroticism.
| Original language | English | 
|---|---|
| Journal | European Journal of Personality | 
| Volume | 32 | 
| Issue number | 4 | 
| Pages (from-to) | 393-404 | 
| Number of pages | 12 | 
| ISSN | 0890-2070 | 
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 01.07.2018 | 
| Externally published | Yes | 
- jangle fallacy, neuroticism, rebuttal, self-compassion
 - Psychology
 
Research areas
- Social Psychology
 
