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Mattering, Insecure Attachment, Rumination, and Self-Criticism in Distress Among University Students

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Abstract

The current study sought to illustrate the vulnerability of people who feel like they do not matter by uniquely examining the extent to which feelings of not mattering are associated with insecure attachment styles, rumination, facets of self-criticism, and depression. Analyses of data from a cross-sectional sample of 247 university students established that mattering was associated negatively with insecure attachment and ruminative brooding and with multiple facets of self-criticism, including self-hate. As expected, depression was associated negatively with mattering. Depression was also linked with insecure attachment, rumination, and self-criticism. A regression analysis showed that mattering uniquely predicted depression after taking into account the variance explained by insecure attachment, rumination, and self-criticism. Additionally, rumination mediated the link between low mattering and depression. Our findings highlight the need to consider mattering as a potentially unique vulnerability among distressed students that involves a salient cognitive element and an internalized negative self-view that can potentiate self-criticism and self-hate. Collectively, our results also underscore the need for interventions targeting the sense of not mattering to others among emerging adults.

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Funding

This study was funded by a Canada Research Chair in Personality and Health awarded to the first author.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canada

    Gordon L. Flett & Taryn Nepon

  2. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Ron Burdo

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  1. Gordon L. Flett
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  2. Ron Burdo
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  3. Taryn Nepon
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Correspondence to Gordon L. Flett.

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All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000.

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Informed consent was obtained from all participants for being included in the study.

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Flett, G.L., Burdo, R. & Nepon, T. Mattering, Insecure Attachment, Rumination, and Self-Criticism in Distress Among University Students. Int J Ment Health Addiction 19, 1300–1313 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-020-00225-z

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