Background: Appearance-related cyberbullying is increasingly prevalent on social networking sites and has been linked to appearance-related concerns and disordered eating in young women. However, effective interventions that can reduce these negative effects remain limited. This study examined the effectiveness of a 10-minute self-compassion writing in alleviating body dissatisfaction, self-objectification, and emotional eating among young women who had experienced appearance-related cyberbullying.
Methods: A total of 175 Chinese young women (Mage = 20.90, SDage = 1.65) were randomly assigned to one of the three groups: self-compassion, distraction, or control group. At baseline, participants completed assessments of trait and state body dissatisfaction, trait self-objectification, trait self-compassion, emotional eating, and affect. Then they recalled a personal experience of appearance-related cyberbullying victimization and reported their state body dissatisfaction, state self-objectification, and affect. During the intervention, participants in the self-compassion group wrote for 10 minutes expressing kindness toward their appearance and the cyberbullying experience, while those in the distraction group described neutral topics and those in the control group did nothing. Post-intervention assessments included state body dissatisfaction, self-objectification, self-compassion, affect, and a food-choosing task, followed by a one-month follow-up on trait-level measures.
Results: At post-intervention, state body dissatisfaction and negative affect were significantly lower, and positive affect was significantly higher in both the self-compassion and distraction groups compared to the control group. State self-objectification was significantly lower in the self-compassion group than in the other two groups. At one-month follow-up, participants in the self-compassion condition showed significantly reduced trait body dissatisfaction relative to control.
Conclusions: The findings provide preliminary evidence for the potential of self-compassion writing in reducing state self-objectification and state body dissatisfaction in young women who had suffered appearance-related cyberbullying. Further research is required to verify its robustness and explore more effective ways of delivery.