Attachment Styles, Personality Traits and Pathological Love among Young Adults

Abstract

The present study explored the relationship between attachment style, personality traits and pathological Love among young adults. In addition, personality traits have been investigated as a moderator in a relationship between Attachment style and Pathological love. Quantitative cross-sectional design was implemented in the current study with the sample size (n=470) calculated by G-Power. Revised adult attachment scale, Love Addiction Inventory and Big Five Inventory short form was used for the data collection. Correlation and moderation analysis was done to explore the relationships between the variables. Findings indicate that openness to experience was significantly co related to pathological love, dismissive attachment style and fearful style are found to be significantly correlated with pathological love. In addition, conscientiousness is found to be a moderator between dismissive style and pathological love. The diversity in these finding from previous researches were due to the variations in cultural, religious, ethnic and societal background among the sample. The current study suggested the need to further explore the impact of cultural variations on the manifestation and prevalence of pathological love among multiple regions for future studies.