The relationship between narcissistic personality traits and forgiveness: Mediating role of attachment styles

The aim of this study is to investigate the correlation between narcissistic personality, hypersensitive narcissism and forgiveness; as well as the mediating role of attachment styles. In this direction, a research question has been developed: "Do attachment styles have a mediating role in the relationship between narcissistic personality, hypersensitive narcissism and forgiveness?". The participants of this research are 536 undergraduate students at Gaziantep University, currently continuing majoring in different departments. Personal Information Form, Heartland Forgiveness Scale, Narcissistic Personality Inventory, Hypersensitive Narcissism Scaleand Adult Attachment Style Scale were used in the study. SPSS Macro Process v.3.3 program and Sobel test were used to look at the mediating effect of the attachment styles, descriptive statistics and Pearson Correlation Analysis were used on the data obtained in the study. According to the results of the analysis, a positive significant relationship was found between narcissistic personality and hypersensitive narcissism and attachment styles, a positive significant relationship between safe attachment and forgiveness, a negative relationship between anxious and avoidant attachment styles and forgiveness, a negative significant relationship between narcissistic personality and hypersensitive narcissism and forgiveness. Secure attachment and anxious attachment have been found to have a partial mediating role in the relationship between narcissistic personality and forgiveness. In the relationship between hypersensitive narcissism and forgiveness, secure attachment was not effective, while anxious attachment was found to have a partial mediator role. The findings were discussed in related literature.