Investigating the relationship between early maladaptive schemas and narcissism in students

A narcissistic personality disorder is one of the most difficult personality patterns to treat. People with the narcissistic disorder cannot express their weaknesses and understand the impact of their behavior on others. The goal of the study is to investigate the relationship between early maladaptive schemas and narcissistic personality characteristics. So, 225 male and female undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students were selected by availability sampling from the students of Urmia University in the academic year 2019-2020 (N = 17000). All participants filled the Young schema questionnaire and the Ames narcissistic personality questionnaire. The data were analyzed by SPSS software version 22 using the Pearson correlation coefficient. The results of data analysis showed, there is a positive and significant correlation between early maladaptive schemas and narcissistic personality characteristics (R = 0.663). In other words, with an increase in early maladaptive schemas, the narcissistic personality characteristic also increases and vice versa (43% of common variance). The findings of the research can help and create a context for further and comprehensive research in this area.