Limitations
The sample was small, relatively young and predominantly female, reflecting the study´s university location and cultural gender norms of help-seeking. Findings are therefore preliminary and replication with a larger and more representative sample is warranted. Whilst positive affect items were drawn from a validated measure, the negative affect measure was not, since validated measures of state affect either measure overly-generic negative affect [The response to the control task (reading a city culture magazine) varied considerably between sessions (see The compassion task in our study focused on willing oneself to be calm and well, in line with loving-kindness meditations [