Testing the effect of criticism on self-compassion in adults with and without ADHD traits, using an implicit experimental paradigm

In Beaton et al., (2020), a cross-sectional study design was used to demonstrate that levels of self-compassion were lower in people with high traits of ADHD, compared to people with low traits of ADHD. This was partially explained by the levels of criticism that participants perceived. However, there are a number of restrictions with this study design. For example, the study relies on explicit measures that are vulnerable to a number of biases including recall bias, social-desirability, self-deceptive positivity and common method bias. Yet, trait self-compassion is viewed as an implicit - unconscious, habitual and automatic trait, which influences individuals to be more accepting and less judgemental towards intrinsic and extrinsic stressors. Therefore, we argue that a measure of self-compassion should be attainable through an implicit task, that is free from the interference of conscious cognition observed in explicit measures. Moreover, the study measured perceived criticism, and therefore it is inconclusive whether self-compassion is associated with levels of criticism perceived or objective levels of criticism. Consequently, the proposed study will use an experimental design to expand on the initial findings of Beaton et al., (2020) in two ways; firstly, it aims to determine if self-compassion is lower at a trait level in people with ADHD and secondly, it aims to manipulate levels of criticism to observe if there is a direct effect of criticism on implicit self-compassion.