Examining university students' self-compassion and compassionate love levels in terms of perceived parental attitudes

The aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between university students? self-compassion and compassionate love levels and perceived parental attitudes. An another purpose of this research is to examine the differences self-compassion, compassionate love and perceieved parental attitudes in terms of gender, number of siblings, birth order and perceived income statue.The sample of this study was composed of 326 undergraduate students from different departments of the University of Sakarya. 230 female and 96 male took part. The Parental Attitude Scale (Eldeleklioğlu, 1996), Self-Compassion Scale (Akın, Akın ve Abacı, 2007), Compassionate Love Scale (Akın ve Eker, 2011) and data collection form were used as measurement instrument.The results obtained of the research were examined by using correlation, t test and one way ANOVA. In consequence of this research it?s found out that there are significant relations between self-compassion, compassionate love and parental attitudes. It has been found the students had high level self-compassion who perceived parental attitudes as democratic and low level self-compassion who perceived parental attitudes as authoritative and protective. The students had high level compassionate love who perceived parental attitudes authoritative and protective. It has determined that perceived authoritative and protective parental attitudes differ in terms of gender, democratic parental attitudes differ in terms of number of sibling and compassionate love level differs in terms of gender. It has emerged that there is a negative relationship between self-compassion and compassionate love. The research findings were discussed in line with problems.Key Words: Parental Attitudes, Self- compassion, Compassionate Love