Kindness Protects the Heart: The Positive Impact of Self-Compassion on Autobiographical Memory Retrieval

Accumulating evidence has demonstrated the protective role of self-compassion in mental health. However, little is known about how self-compassion influences the cognitive and neural processes involved in autobiographical memory retrieval. The present study examined whether individuals with different levels of self-compassion differ in the behavioral performance and neural dynamics of autobiographical memory retrieval.

Participants were divided into high and low self-compassion groups according to their Self-Compassion Scale scores. In Experiment 1, 49 participants (high = 26) completed an autobiographical memory retrieval task. In Experiment 2, 39 participants (high = 20) completed an autobiographical memory retrieval task while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. Event-related potentials (ERPs) and theta-band functional connectivity were analyzed to characterize the temporal dynamics and network properties of memory retrieval.

Compared with the low self-compassion group, the high self-compassion group showed significantly higher autobiographical memory specificity, indicating more detailed memory retrieval. ERP results showed that the low self-compassion group exhibited a larger N1 amplitude, suggesting enhanced early attentional allocation to retrieval cues, whereas the high self-compassion group showed a larger late positive potential (LPP), reflecting greater sustained cognitive evaluation during later stages of memory retrieval. Theta-band network analysis further showed that the high self-compassion group exhibited lower global efficiency and longer characteristic path length than the low self-compassion group, indicating different patterns of functional network organization during autobiographical memory retrieval.

These findings suggest that self-compassion is associated with more specific autobiographical memory retrieval and distinct neural processing during both early attentional and later evaluative stages of memory retrieval, providing behavioral and neurophysiological evidence for the relationship between self-compassion and autobiographical memory retrieval.