self-compassion and social anxiety symptoms: fear of negative evaluation and shame as mediators

Objective: social anxiety disorder (sad) can negatively impact various aspects of life, incurring significant personal and societal costs. thus, it is necessary to identify protective factors that buffer against sad symptoms and the mechanisms underlying their mitigation. this research aims to examine the relationship between self-compassion and social anxiety symptoms among university students, specifically exploring the potential mediating effects of fear of negative evaluation (fne) and shame.methods: this study examined the relationships between variables through structural equation modeling (sem) using a correlational design. the sample included 242 undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students from tehran’s public universities, selected via the convenience sampling method. social phobia inventory, the self-compassion scale, the brief form of fne scale, and the shame subscale of self-conscious affect questionnaire were used to collect data. data analysis involved descriptive statistics and pearson correlation via spss software, version 22, and sem using amos software, version 22.results: the results from analyzing the structural relationships indicated a direct negative effect of self-compassion on social anxiety symptoms, fne, and shame. additionally, fne and shame had a positive effect on social anxiety symptoms directly (p<0.01). investigating the significance of mediating variables indicated an indirect negative effect of self-compassion on social anxiety symptoms, passing through fne and shame as mediators (p<0.01). the research model had a good fit and accounted for 59% of the variance in social anxiety symptoms. conclusion: based on the research results, increasing self-compassion can reduce social anxiety symptoms through both direct and indirect paths, by reducing the effect of fne and shame.