Abstract:
The research aimed to study the Impact of Interpersonal jealousy and Self
Loathing on Quality of Friendship and Psychological Distress among University
students. In late adolescence and early adulthood, friendship is a very important tool
and a social support source for an adolescent’s development by providing approval, understanding, insight and social skills (Hiatt et al., 2015) where inflexibility in
accepting your significant other towards other people due to jealousy incriminates in
quality of friendship. Meanwhile, past researches has shown that self-disgust, an
aspect of self loathing, has been associated with a range of psychological difficulties
(Amir et al., 2010) which are indications of psychopathology later on. No doubt, Self loathing and self-hatred are two different things where Self-hatred is extreme
criticism of oneself as feeling that nothing you do is good enough or that you are
unworthy or undeserving of good things in life but when this negative self evaluation
becomes a part of individual as trait is called Self-loathing, encompassing as continual
feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and low self-esteem(Turnell,et al., 2019).So, the present
study was conducted to understands the roots of how quality of friendship and
psychological distress are the implications of negative attitudes such as Interpersonal
jealousy (negative attitude towards others) and self loathing (negative attitude towards
self) (Begwell, et al., 1998). In order to study, it was hypothesized that Interpersonal
Jealousy will be negatively related to Quality of Friendship and positively related to
Psychological Distress among University students. Similarly, Self Loathing would be
negatively related to Quality of Friendship and positively related to Psychological
Distress among university students. Data was collected using Survey research design
viii
where population was university students (N=400) from early adulthood of age range
(18-25years) where male(n=156) and female (n=244). Interpersonal Jealousy Scale
(Mathes & Severa, 1981) was used to measure interpersonal jealousy while
Friendship Quality Scale (Thien, et al., 2012) was used to study quality of friendship. Meanwhile, self loathing was measured using Self Hatred Scale (Turnell, et al., 2019)
and psychological distress was accounted using Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21
(Lovibond, 1995). After data collection, results were implied into two catagories of
psychological distress and non-distress, to study if significant difference exist among
the variables. In order to analyze the data, t-test, regression and correlation were used. The results shows that interpersonal jealousy significantly predict quality of
friendship and psychological distress. Further, self loathing significantly predicts
quality of friendship and psychological distress. Implications of the study were
discussed in the light of results. Keywords: Interpersonal jealousy, self loathing, quality of friendship, psychological
distress, university stude
