Examining the Relationship between Different Types of Attachment Styles and the Difficulty of Interpersonal Relationships in People with Narcissistic Personality Traits

This research was conducted with the aim of investigating the relationship between types of attachment styles and the difficulty of interpersonal relationships in people with narcissistic personality traits. The type of descriptive research and its method was also correlational. The statistical population included all students studying psychology at Islamic Azad University, Tehran South Branch in the academic year of 2023-2024, in the number of 1063 people, of which 144 people were selected by purposive sampling. Ames et al's (2006) narcissistic personality questionnaire, Collins and Reed's (1990) attachment styles, and Barkham et al's (1996) interpersonal relationship difficulty questionnaires were used to collect the required data. The data were analyzed using the inferential test of Pearson's correlation coefficient and multiple regression and SPSS26 software. The results showed that there is a significant negative correlation between secure attachment style and the difficulty of interpersonal relationships (P<0.01). There is a significant positive correlation between avoidant and ambivalent attachment style with the difficulty of interpersonal relationships (P<0.01). According to the findings of the research, it can be concluded that attachment styles are a suitable predictor for determining the difficulty of interpersonal relationships in students.