Investigation of the Relationship between Personality Traits, PerceivedCompetence and Loneliness Levels of Fine Arts High School Students

Fine arts high school is one of the important institutes which both prepares art studentsfor university and raises prospective artists in Turkey. When it is considered the developmentperiods of the adolescents studying in fine art high school where is given education accordingto student’s art talents and interests, the students of which come to fore as a group experiencingloneliness more deeply than others both because of the way of life they keep due to theirmajority and the development in which period they are. For this reason, it is important tounderstand the predictors of loneliness. The purpose of this research is to examine therelationship between loneliness and personality traits and the perception competence levels ofthe adolescents in the fine arts high school. The population of the study was composed of 224students (133 female, 91 male), attending to Eskişehir Fine Arts High School. Participantscompleted the UCLA Loneliness Scale, Perceived Competence Scale for Adolescents andPersonality Test based on Adjectives (SDKT). The research data were analyzed by correlationand hierarchical regression analysis. According to the results, the personality trait ofextroversion, neuroticism and social competence perception are significant predictors ofloneliness, and these variables altogether explain about 39.8% of loneliness. When this findingconsidered, it can be stated that in addition to being developed with the personal trait ofextroversion and social competence, reducing emotional imbalance can help adolescents’ tocope with the negative effects of loneliness more effectively.