The mediating role of self-compassion in the relationship between childhood peer bullying and social comparison based on physical appearance

People engage with others for a significant portion of their life. People's perceptions of themselves are shaped by these interactions, which also affect how they show themselves. The communication that individuals establish with their peers in childhood affects their communication with their environment and attitudes towards themselves in adulthood, in different ways. Previous studies have shown that individuals who were bullied in childhood have lower levels of self-compassion and perceive themselves as more worthless, weak, unattractive, etc., compared to their peers. The aim of the research was that the physical dimension of social comparison was not examined in these studies and the subject was not studied on social media. After the correlation and mediator variable analyses, it was seen that self-compassion had a full mediating role between childhood peer bullying and social comparison based on physical appearance. Findings show that individuals who were bullied in childhood have low self-compassion levels in adulthood, and individuals with low self-compassion levels tend to make social comparisons based on more negative physical appearance. It has been observed that gender does not have a moderator role in this relationship. The results were evaluated within the framework of the information obtained from the literature, and the contribution of the study to the literature, its limitations and suggestions for future research were presented.