Personality Traits, Spiritual Intelligence and Psychological Distress among University Students

Abstract

The present study was design to explore the relationship of personality traits, spiritual intelligence and their effects on psychological distress. A sample of 380 students (N=Male 116 & Female 264) was collected from different universities. Sample was divided into two age groups as 18-22 and 23-26. Personality Trait measure (BFI) by Oliver P, John and Berkeley (2008), Spiritual Intelligence scale developed by Abdollahzadeh1 et.al (2015) and stress anxiety depression scale (DASS) by Lovibond (1995) was used to access the variables of personality traits, spiritual intelligence and psychological distress respectively. It was hypothesized that there will be relationship of (α) alpha personality traits(agreeableness, neuroticism, consciousness) and (β) beta personality traits (extroversions, openness) with psychological distress. Moreover, it was hypothesized personality traits (Alpha (α) & (β) Beta) would correlate with spiritual intelligence. It is also hypothesized that alpha personality traits (agreeableness, neuroticism, consciousness) of personalities would be positively correlated with psychological distress and beta (extroversions, openness) personality traits would have negative correlation with psychological distress. It is also hypothesized that spiritual intelligence would moderate the relationship between Personality Traits (α & β) and Psychological Distress. The data was analyzed through statistical package for social sciences (SPSS version 25). Descriptive analysis was used to access frequencies and percentages for demographics. To study the relationship between variables, Correlation analysis was used. To find out the relationship of dependent variable on independent variable, regression analysis was used. The results revealed that there is significant relationship between alpha (α) personality traits and psychological distress. Moreover results indicate the negative correlation between beta (β) personality traits and psychological distress. Results showed that spiritual intelligence significantly moderate between personality traits and psychological distress. Moreover there was no significant difference of psychological distress on gender.