Examination of the relationship among university students' depression, childhood traumas, early maladaptive schemas, and tendencies of infidelity

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between depression, childhood traumas, early maladaptive schemas and infidelity behavior among university students. Personal Information Form, Beck Depression Scale, Childhood Trauma Scale, Young Schema Questionnaire – Short Form and İnfidelity Tendency Scale were administered to 412 participants. In this study, depression, childhood traumas, early maladaptive schemas, and infidelity tendency scores were compared in terms of gender, working status and parental marital status. According to the findings obtained in the study, it was seen that emotional abuse, damaged boundaries, disconnection and other- directedness schema factors were higher in terms of gender variable than men. In addition, males' infidelity behavior was found to be higher than females. In terms of working status variable, infidelity behavior, physical abuse, physical neglect and sexual abuse, which are sub-dimensions of childhood traumas, were higher in employees; and the other orientation tendency scores were higher in the non-employed individuals. In addition, the schema area scores of the participants who have separated parents were found to be significantly higher than those of deceptive behavior. According to the correlation and regression findings, depression scores were found to be significantly related to infidelity, early maladaptive schema areas, and childhood trauma subscales Infidelity was found to be significantly associated with childhood traumas and early maladaptive schema factors. When the predictors of infidelity are examined, high levels of emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and disconnect schema predict high infidelity behavior scores. It is thought that the findings obtained in this study can be explanatory about the negative experiences and attitudes of the individuals in their romantic relationships and that the intervention studies can be effective by examining these factors for young adults.