An examination of the relationship between early maladaptive schemas and attachment styles

The aim of this research is to examine the level of relationship between early maladaptive schemas and attachment styles that individuals form from the first periods of their lives. This research was designed with the relational model, one of the quantitative methods. The study group of the research consists of 400 young adults who were determined on a voluntary basis using the appropriate sampling method. Research data was collected using three different data collection forms. The first form is the Personal Information Form prepared by the researcher, which includes various information such as the perceived socio-economic levels of the participants, their romantic relationship status, the mother's working status, the level of emotional closeness to the mother and the level of emotional closeness to the father. The second form is the Young Schema Scale Short Form to identify participants' early maladaptive schema areas. The third form is the Three-Dimensional Attachment Styles Scale Form to determine individuals' attachment styles. Research data was collected using online communication tools via Google Form. The data obtained in the research were transferred to the computer environment, analyzed with the help of SPSS, and interpreted using Pearson correlation analysis, ANOVA, t-test, and Scheffe test analyses. The significance level was taken as 0.05. To examine the normality of distribution of the research data, kurtosis and skewness values were examined. It was observed that the values were in the range of -1/+1 and these values showed a normal distribution. In this study, it was determined that there was a significant negative relationship between individuals' secure attachment levels and high standards, damaged boundaries, damaged autonomy and disconnected schema areas. It was found that there was a positive significant relationship between avoidant attachment style and damaged autonomy, detachment, high standards, damaged boundaries schema domains, and all schema domains in anxious-avoidant attachment style. It was found that there was a statistically significant difference; between the impaired autonomy schema domain and the perceived socio-economic level, having a romantic relationship, mother's working status, the level of emotional bond to the mother and the level of emotional bond to the father; disconnection between schema domain and having a romantic relationship, mother's working status, emotional bond to the mother, emotional bond to the father; between the high standards schema domain and perceived socio-economic level and emotional bond to the mother; between damaged boundaries and the working status of the mother, and between the schema domain of intentionality and the perceived socio-economic level and emotional bond to the mother. It was determined that there was a significant difference between secure attachment style and emotional bond to mother and emotional bond to father, and between avoidant attachment style and perceived socio-economic level and maternal employment status, and between anxious attachment style and having a romantic relationship.