Extended Abstract
1. Introduction
his research is conducted to determine the role of personal factors, initial maladaptive schemas, and quality of love relationships to predict the signs of emotional failure.
Our understanding of a happy and healthy adult is an individual who is capable of loving, in other words, establishing and maintaining long-term relationships [1]. However, after emotional failure, every individual experiences the symptoms of failure differently. The key dilemma is that a failure in a love relationship is associated directly with the decreased level of welfare [3], life satisfaction [4], anger and grief [5].
Researches show that personality traits [1] are among the factors influencing love relationships. Personality traits can be defined as dimensions of individual differences in the form of stable patterns of thinking, emotional, and behavioral patterns [12]. One of the factors influencing personality characteristics is the style and quality of attachment [16]. Emotional attachment is a deep emotional bond between a person and a specific individual in his or her life. These studies on the role of personality traits, initial maladaptive schemas, and the quality of attachment relationships in predicting the emotional failure symptoms indicate that these factors are associated with the effects of emotional failure and can predict it [11]. It also suggests a relationship between personality traits and attachment styles with emotional failure [23].
2. Method
The present study has a correlational design. The statistical population consisted of all mental patients who were referred to counseling centers of Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran University, and Roudehen Azad University with a complaint of emotional failure. The sampling method was purposive and 200 samples with a complaint of love failure were recruited. The subjects responded to the questionnaires and were screened based on the cut-off scores for the emotional failure symptoms on the score scale. The obtained data were analyzed using structural equation modeling and LISREL software (Figure 1).
3. Results
The Mean±SD age of the participants was 15.23±4.52 years. The findings indicate that the highest mean subscale value of early maladaptive schemas are related to rigorous/defective and the lowest average relates to dependency/incompetence. Furthermore, the highest mean of the subscale of personality characteristics was related to excitability and the lowest mean to honesty/modesty. Also, the highest mean subscale of attachment relationships is associated with the relations with peers and the lowest to peer alienation.
Based on the findings, the early maladaptive schemas, personality traits, and the attachment quality have a significant relationship with emotional failure symptoms and the structural equation model shows a good fitness with a root mean square approximation index of 0.047 (Table 1). This means that the proposed model for the predictive elements of emotional failure symptoms fits with the inputs and personality characteristics, initial maladaptive schemas, and the quality of attachment relationships could predict the emotional failure symptoms. Furthermore, it shows that variables of extroversion, excitability, peer trust, sacrifice, abandonment/unsustainability, and modesty/honesty are the best determinants of emotional failure symptoms.
The results of this study indicate that the variable of emotional failure symptoms increases as the peer trust variable decreases. Moreover, self-sacrifice and abandonment/instability schemas predict the severity of emotional failure symptoms. Therefore, it seems that a reduction in the variable of self-sacrifice increases the severity of emotional failure symptoms while an increase in abandonment/instability variable increases the severity of emotional failure symptoms variable. The results of this study show that the variables for extroversion, excitement, and honesty/humility predict the emotional failure symptoms. With a decrease in the extroversion and honesty/humility variables and with an increase in the excitability variable, the emotional failure symptoms increases.
4. Discussion
With regard to a comprehensive outlook and in response to the key question of this research, we can conclude that our presented model fits properly so that regarding the relationship between predictive variables and the intensity of the emotional failure symptoms, it could predict the criterion variable. Maladaptive schemas such as self-sacrifice, abandonment/ instability, emotional deprivation, merit/manners have the largest share in predicting the criterion variable. Among the characteristics of personality; extroversion, excitability and honesty/modesty; and among the relationship qualities; attachment, alienation of peers and trust in peers could properly predict the severity of emotional failure symptoms.
Ethical Considerations
Compliance with ethical guidelines
All ethical principles were considered in this article. The participants were informed about the purpose of the research and its implementation stages; they were also assured about the confidentiality of their information; Moreover, They were allowed to leave the study whenever they wish, and if desired, the results of the research would be available to them.
Funding
The present paper was extracted from the PhD. dissertation of the first author, in Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities, Abhar Branch, Islamic Azad University.
Authors contributions
Conceptualization: All authors; Methodology: All authors; Validation: All authors; Investigation: All authors; Writing-original draft preparation: Elham Mesbahi; Writing-review & editing: Elham Mesbahi, Mojtaba AmiriMajd; and Visualization, supervision, project administration: Mojtaba AmiriMajd.
Conflict of interest
The authors declared no conflict of interest.