Mitigating the Conflict Students Experience With Group Projects Through Self-Compassion and Compassion to Others

• In Event: 18.072 - Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: 18.072-16 - Stress, Coping, and Resilience Among College Students

Abstract

This study explored the role of self-compassion in college students’ motivational and emotional experiences when involved in group collaborative situations. Students come to a group project with various motivational and social goals. Previous research showed that these goals interacted with outside obligations, affecting project commitment and emotions. Here, conflict with group members was added as well as self-compassion and compassion to others to test the contributions of conflict and compassion on predicting project commitment and emotions. From hierarchical regression analyses, a first model showed that goals explained a significant amount of variance in project commitment and emotions. When measures of conflict were added, the prediction was improved significantly. A third model with measures of compassion contributed significantly to explaining outcome measures.

Authors

• John Park, The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

• Phoebe Long, The University of Texas - Austin

• Hyung-Sok (Nathan) Choe, The University of Texas - Austin

• Diane L. Schallert, The University of Texas - Austin