Attachment Style, Machiavellianism and Psychological Distress in University Students

Abstract

The current study was conducted to explore the relationship between Attachment styles, Machiavellianism and Psychological distress in university students. It was hypothesized that there is a significant association between Attachment style, Machiavellianism and psychological distress. It was also hypothesized that there would be gender differences among the study variables. For this purpose the data of 405 students was taken. For the assessment of Machiavellianism, the Two-dimensional Machiavellianism scale (TDMS) (Monaghan, Bizumic & Seldom, 2018) was used, for the assessment of Attachment styles, the Relationship Questionnaire (RQ) (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991) was used and for the assessment of psychological distress, DASS-21 (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995) was used. Results indicate that Machiavellianism is significantly associated with dismissive avoidant attachment style and with psychological distress. It was also found that the fearful avoidant and anxious-preoccupied attachment style have a significant positive relationship with psychological distress. Gender differences indicate that men are more Machiavellian then women while women scored more on fearful avoidant attachment style and stress as compared to men.