ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1619432
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Dark Tetrad of Personality - Psychopathy, Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Sadism, and their Relationship with Psychopathological and Health-Promoting FactorsView all 7 articles
Mechanisms of Dark Personality Traits in Lesbian Adult Attachment: A Chain-mediated Model
Provisionally accepted
- 1College of Psychology and Mental Health, North China University of Science and Technology, Tangshan, China
- 2Hebei Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Brain Science, Tangshan, Hebei, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Recent years have witnessed a growing focus on the mental health of sexual minorities, however research on the adult attachment styles of lesbians remains limited. This study examined the impact of dark personality traits on adult attachment, as well as the mediating roles of internalized homophobia and self-esteem among lesbian women. A total of 1136 lesbians (Mage = 21.57, SDage = 3.716) were surveyed using the Dirty Dozen, the Experiences in Close Relationships Inventory, the Internalized Homophobia Scale, and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. With dark personality traits as the independent variable, internalised homophobia and self-esteem as the mediating variables, and the two dimensions of adult attachment as the dependent variables, the relationship among these the variables was tested using the PROCESS plug-in for SPSS version 27.0. The results indicated that dark personality traits are strongly correlated with internalised homophobia and are a significant factor influencing it (β = 0.052, p < 0.001). Internalised homophobia, in turn, significantly negatively impacted self-esteem (β = -0.039, p < 0.001). Furthermore, self-esteem significantly negatively influenced both attachment avoidance (β = -1.033, p < 0.001) and attachment anxiety (β = -1.246, p < 0.001). These findings support the chain mediation hypothesis, revealing three distinct pathways: (1) dark personality traits → internalised homophobia → attachment avoidance, attachment anxiety, (2) dark personality traits → self-esteem → attachment avoidance, attachment anxiety, and (3) dark personality traits → internalised homophobia → self-esteem → attachment avoidance, attachment anxiety. These results highlight the significant impact of dark personality traits on attachment patterns among lesbians, offering valuable insights for counselling and clinical practice tailored to lesbians.
Keywords: Dark personality, adult attachment, internalized homophobia, self-esteem, Lesbian
Received: 28 Apr 2025; Accepted: 07 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Li and Ma. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Shaoyang Ma, College of Psychology and Mental Health, North China University of Science and Technology, Tangshan, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.