Objectives <p>This study aimed to examine causal attributions as a possible mechanism by which self-compassion promotes an adaptive response to failure. It was hypothesized that higher levels of state self-compassion (SSC) would result in less maladaptive shame in response to failure, and that this could be explained by more adaptive attributions for the failure.</p> Method <p>Participants were randomly assigned to either a self-compassion (SC; <i>n</i> = 410) or expressive writing (EW; <i>n</i> = 410) task&#xa0;to experimentally manipulate SSC. All participants were then exposed to a test failure manipulation and the perceived cause of their test performance was evaluated on four causal dimensions: locus, stability, globality, and controllability. Failure-induced “guilt-free” shame was assessed as the dependent variable.</p> Results <p>The effect of writing task on failure-induced state shame was found to be significantly mediated by post-writing SSC, such that those in the SC condition reported less shame than those in the EW condition, due to higher levels of SSC (<i>b</i> = − 0.067, 95% CI [− 0.107, − 0.035]). Further, this protective effect of SSC was mediated by causal attributions: the effect of group on shame was sequentially mediated by SSC and attributions, with higher SSC being associated with attributions that were less internal (<i>b</i> = − 0.005, 95% CI [− 0.012, − 0.002]), less stable (<i>b</i> = − 0.009, 95% CI [− 0.016, − 0.004]), less global (<i>b</i> = − 0.015, 95% CI [− 0.027, − 0.008]), and more controllable (<i>b</i> = − 0.007, 95% CI [− 0.014, − 0.003]).</p> Conclusions <p>Results suggest that SSC may buffer individuals from the negative effects of failure by promoting more adaptive causal attributions.</p> Preregistration <p>This study is not preregistered.</p>