Discrimination self-harming individuals from normal people based on positive and negative experiences, neuroticism and motivational values characters

Present study purpose was to study role of positive and negative affective experiences, neuroticism and motivational values characters in descrimination self-harming individuals from normal people. Research method was descriptive and, comparative causal type and the statistical population of this study was the students of dormitories at different universities of Tehran in 2016, where 218 of them (Between 30 to 50 participants from each of Tehran, Allame Tabatabai, Kharazmi, Shahed, Shahid Beheshti, and Tarbiat Modares universities) were selected by convenience sampling method. Finally, based on the Self-Harm Inventory of Sansone, Wiederman & Sansone (1998), 40 patients in the self-anxiety group and 40 patients in the normal group, they were screened and selected. The research tools consisted of the Positive and Negative Experiences Questionnaire, Diener, Writz, Tov, Kim-Prieto, Choi, Oishi & Biswas-Diener 2010, Schwartz Value Survey (1992), and NEO Personality Inventory 5 factors Costa & McCrae 1986 completed the test discriminant analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings showed that the mean neuroticism (F= 44.94, P= 0.001) and negative affect (F= 8.04, P= 0.006) of the self-harming group were significantly higher than the normal people, and the mean positive affect (F= 15.84, P= 0.001), universality (F= 8.96, P= 0.004), benevolence (F= 15.14, P= 0.001), tradition (F= 13.68, P= 0.001), conformity (F= 16.39, P= 0.001) and safety (F= 7.54, P= 7.54) were significantly lower than the normal group. The present discriminate function was able to explain 49.8% of the self- harming/ non-self- harming variance and coulde correctly grouped 91.3% of the participants. The neuroticism, conformity, positive affect, benevolence, tradition, universality and negative affect variables can be used as a criterion to predict group membership of individuals in the normal group and the self- harm group and as a discrimination criterion for these two groups. Therefore, providing training to improve these variables can help moderate self-harming behaviors.