The role of self-compassion and perceived social support in relating five-factor personality traits to general psychological symptomatology

The aim of this study is to investigate the mediating role of self-compassion and perceived social support (PSS) in the relationship between the five-factor personality traits and psychological symptomatology. The study was carried out with the participation of 425 (300 female, 125 male) students (Mean Age = 21.19, S = 2.01) who were studying in different departments of Hacettepe University. Data was collected through Individual Information Form, Adjective Based Personality Scale, Brief Symptom Inventory, Self-Compassion Scale and The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. The data obtained from participants is analysed by using MANOVA, corelation and mediator variable analysis. The relationship between the variables and the sub-dimensions of variables is found statistically significant. The mediator variable analysis which is conducted to explore the mediator role of self-compassion and PSS, self-compassion and PSS have mediator effect on the relationship between neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and psychological symptomatology. When the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES), gender and psychological symptomatology is analyzed, the results show that psychological sypmtomatolgy is significantly differed in terms of gender; no significant difference in terms of SES and the variables don't have a interaction effect on psychological symptomatology. The findings of this study were discussed under the light of related literature and it was found out that the findings regarding the interrelationships between the variables were mostly consistent with the findings of other studies in the literature. It was revealed that the mediating role of self-compassion and PSS on the relationship between personality and psychological symptoms is important to understand the relationship between personality and psychopathology. It is believed that the differences in the mediating effects of sub-dimensions of self-compassion were resulted from protective effects of positive components of self compassion against psychological disorders, and triggering effects of negative components of self compassion on psychological disorders.