Body image and the relation to mindfulness and self-compassion in  physical education students: a cross-cultural study

Petra Jansen; Kashef Zayed; Jürgen Kittsteiner

doi:10.4081/​hpr.2020.9172

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Body image and the relation to mindfulness and self-compassion in physical education students: a cross-cultural study

Petra Jansen^1*, Kashef Zayed², Jürgen Kittsteiner¹

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¹ Faculty of Human Science, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany

² Department of Physical Education & Sport Sciences, Sultan Quaboos University, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman

HPR 2020 , 8(3), 1; https://doi.org/10.4081/hpr.2020.9172

Submitted: 8 June 2020 | Revised: 22 July 2020 | Accepted: 23 November 2020 | Published: 30 December 2020

© 2020 by the Author(s). Licensee Health Psychology Research, USA. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )

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Abstract

The present study investigated the body images of Omani and German physical education students. 199 students completed a body image test, a dispositional mindfulness and a self-compas sion measurement, as well as a short physical activity question naire. Overall, our results demonstrate that females showed a higher body distortion than males and students in Germany dis played a higher body distortion effect. Concerning mindfulness and self-compassion, students from Oman showed higher values than German students in self-compassion, but not in the disposi tional mindfulness measurement. However, self-compassion and mindfulness were not related to the body distortion effect. This is the first study that provides unique data of self-compassion and mindfulness in an Arabic sample, and shows that self-compassion is higher in Omani students.

Keywords

Self-kindness; students; mindfulness; BMI; body image

body dissatisfaction

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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