A Comparative Study on Attachment Styles, Loneliness and Ruminations among University Students

Abstract This study aims to compare the attachment styles, social and emotional loneliness and rumination among female and male student. This research was post events of a causal-comparative investigation and its statistical population was students of Mazandaran Azad university that a sample of 200 people (106 girls, 94 boys) were selected by multistage cluster sampling and all answered to scale of adult attachment styles RAAS, scale of Social loneliness UCLA, scale of Emotional loneliness WSL and at last Trynor’s the 10-item questionnaire rumination. Data collected by multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and one way (ANOVA) and Multivariable regression analysis were analyzed. The result did show that: Gender differences in two subscales of closeness-attachment and dependency-attachment isn’t statically significant, but there is a significant difference in the anxiety-attachment subscale (p < 0.005). There is no significant difference between means of male and female students who participated in the variables of social loneliness, emotional loneliness and rumination (p < 0.005). Students’ attachment styles and loneliness can predict 23.1% of their rumination (p < 0.005), students’ attachment styles and rumination can also predict 33.5% of their emotional loneliness and 16.3% of their social loneliness (p < 0.0001).