THE IMPACT OF DARK TRIAD, NATURE CONNECTEDNESS, AND EUDAIMONIC WELLBEING AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

This paper examines how Dark Triad personality characteristics and Nature Connectedness impact Eudaimonic Wellbeing in university students at Sargodha in Pakistan. University life is a crucial period of identity, relationship building, and seeking purposes. The knowledge of the impact of personality traits and environmental relationships on the psychological prosperity of students will be especially important in developing nations, where cultures, social and economic conditions influence the experiences of young individuals. It used a cross-sectional research design and purposive sampling was used to recruit 300 university students (62.7 percent female, 37.3 percent male; age range 19-35 years) in government and private universities of Sargodha. The respondents were given the Short Dark Triad Scale (SD3), Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS), and the Questionnaire of Eudaimonic Wellbeing (QEWB). Pearson correlation, multiple regression analysis and independent samples t-tests were used to analyze the data. Findings showed that there was a significant positive correlation between Nature Connectedness and Eudaimonic Wellbeing (r = 0.33, p < 0.01) in favor of the hypothesis that the stronger the relationship to nature, the more the flourishing of the psyche. Conversely, Eudaimonic Wellbeing was also significantly positively correlated with Dark Triad traits (r = 0.23, p < 0.01), indicating that there are more complicated relations between dark personality traits and wellbeing. Regression analysis showed that both Dark Triad (0.12, p < 0.003) and Nature Connectedness (0.39, p < 0.001) had a significant predictive value on Eudaimonic Wellbeing, explaining, 13% of the variance. Males scored significantly higher on Dark Triad characteristics, males ranked much higher than females (t = 3.42, p = 0.001, Cohen d = 0.40) as was previously seen in the difference between the male and female dark personality traits. These results add depth to the psychological thriving in non-Western educational settings, and highlight the value of nature involvement in student wellbeing, in addition to delivering complex associations between personality traits and wellbeing that contradict simplistic conceptualizations of the idea of dark characteristics as all equally bad