Personality correlates of alienation in a university sample

In a study of alienation among urban university students, 85 men and 136 women completed the Gould Manifest Alienation Measure and the 44-item Big Five Inventory, Multivariate analysis of variance disclosed that the 77 college students high on Alienation, irrespective of sex, scored higher on the Neuroticism scale and lower on the Conscientiousness and Openness scales of the Big Five Inventory. None of the interactions between sex and scores on the Big Five Inventory was significant. Results suggest that college students scoring high on alienation can survive in a supportive university environment, although they appear to experience increased anxiety and tension and have a relatively constricted awareness of their environments. Students scoring high on alienation may also he more tolerant of deviant behavior given their perceived irrelevance of social norms.