We investigated how covert narcissism influences depression through shame-focused coping strategies, and tested the moderating effect of self-compassion in this mediating link. Participants were 316 Chinese international students living in South Korea who completed a battery of measures, including the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale, the Compass of Shame Scale, the depression items of the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised, and the Chinese Self-Compassion Scale. We found an association between covert narcissism and depression, and this link was mediated by the shame-focused coping strategies of attack self and withdrawal. Further, self-compassion had a significant moderating effect in the relationship between covert narcissism and the coping strategies of attack self or withdrawal. These findings support a moderated mediation model in which self-compassion buffered the relationship between covert narcissism and depression by mediating the link between covert narcissism and the attack self and withdrawal coping strategies. Our findings may be useful for understanding and helping individuals who have a high level of covert narcissism.

Self-criticism represents a central phenomenon among a variety of psychological distress and has been shown to relate to the motivational systems of competing and social ranking. The purpose of our study was to test the effect of online compassion-focused therapy (CFT)-based intervention (CFI) on Chinese international students in South Korea suffering from high self-criticism and related psychological distress. Thirty-two Chinese international students with a high level of self-criticism were randomized to either a four-session CFI group, a four-session rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT)—based online self-help approach group, or a wait-list (WL) control group. The results suggest that the CFI group demonstrated significant improvements in self-criticism, compassion, depression, anxiety, and shame, and these were greater than those in the REBT and WL groups. Our work provides evidence that CFI offers a possible approach for reducing self-criticism and related psychological distress and increasing compassion level for young Chinese populations.

Background: The purpose of present study was to examine a relation between internalized shame and adaption to college life of Chinese international students and to identify a moderating role of adaptive cognitive emotion regulation on this relation. Methods: A sample of 173 Chinese international students in Seoul was recruited to answer the questionnaires of internalized shame, adaptive cognitive emotion regulation (acceptance & positive reappraisal) and adaption to college. Results: Internalized shame showed a significant negative correlation with adaption to college. So, the higher internalized shame was, the lower adaption to college showed. And the internalized shame was negative effect on level of adaption to college when level of acceptance was high, but the effect of internalized shame on adaptation to college was disappeared when level of acceptance was low. The similar result was also found in positive reappraisal. So, the moderating effect of acceptance and positive reappraisal on the relation between internalized shame and adaption to college was confirmed. Conclusions: These results suggest that during clinical intervention, practitioners should consider internalized shame as a risk factor and cognitive emotion regulation as a protective factor when dealing with foreign students' adaption in college.