The mediating role of self-compassion in the relationship between perceived parenting attitudes and psychological symptoms in university students

This study aimed to examine the mediating effect of self-compassion in the relationship between perceived parenting attitudes and psychological symptoms. Perceived parenting attitudes included mother's perceived warmth, father's perceived warmth, mother's perceived rejection, father's perceived rejection, mother's perceived overprotection and father's perceived overprotection. A total of 191 university students, 137 women and 54 men, participated in the research. The scales used to measure the research variables consisted of the Demographic Information Form, Abbreviated Perceived Parental Attitudes-Child Form (s-EMBU-C), Self-Compassion Scale and Brief Symptom Inventory, respectively. Research data was collected online. Data analysis was made in IBM SPSS Statistics 27 program. In order to find out the research results, Pearson correlation analysis, reliability analysis, One-Way ANOVA, Independent Groups T-Test, Hierarchical Regression and Mediation analysis with PROCESS were performed. According to the findings, gender was found to have a significant effect on perceived parenting attitudes, some subscales of self-compassion and some subscales of psychological symptoms. Parental education level was also found to have a significant impact on perceived parental attitudes and self-judgment. Mediation effect analyzes were conducted separately for the 6 sub-dimensions of perceived parental attitudes. According to the findings, self-compassion was found to have a full mediating effect on the relationship between perceived maternal emotional warmth, paternal emotional warmth, paternal rejection, maternal overprotection, paternal overprotection and psychological symptoms. Self-compassion was found to have a partial mediating effect in the relationship between perceived maternal rejection and psychological symptoms. Keywords: Perceived Parenting Attitudes, Self-Compassion, Psychological Symptoms