Self-compassion is defined as offering a nonjudgmental understanding to oneself. Agency refers to the sense of control individuals feel they have over their actions and the consequences of those actions. We hypothesized that some sense of control is required to exhibit self-compassion, yielding a positive correlation between agency and self-compassion in students. Participants were 59 high-achieving young Black women who attended a historically Black college at the time of the study. Participants were asked to complete 4 narratives along with providing answers to personality scales and demographic information. The narratives were coded for agency on a 0-3 scale, with higher scores indicating greater expression of agency. Self-compassion was measured by questions on the Self-Compassion Scale. A Pearson correlations tested associations between narrative agency and self-compassion. There was not a significant association between agency and self-compassion, r = .14, p > .05. Although the current hypothesis was not supported, this research contributes to the field by considering self-compassion in the context of autobiographical experiences with an understudied population of high-performing Black women.
