Early Maladaptive Schemas and Peer Attachment in Undergraduate Students

Early Maladaptive Schemas are broad, pervasive themes regarding oneself and one’s relationship with others, developed during childhood and elaborated throughout one’s lifetime, and dysfunctional to a significant degree. Attachment is defined as affectional tie that a person forms between himself and another specific one – a tie that binds them together in space and endures over time. A between group design was adopted to see the difference between undergraduate boys and girls in terms of early maladaptive schemas and peer attachment. A correlational design was also adopted to determine if there is a relationship between early maladaptive schemas and peer attachment. Non-probability sampling purposive sampling technique was used to select a sample of 600 undergraduate students (boys=294, girls=306). The results indicated that there was difference between boys and girls in terms of early maladaptive schemas and peer attachment. Findings also indicated that there was a relationship between the early maladaptive schemas and peer attachment.