Abstract
Individual characteristics and manner of emotional expressivity are basic factors behind improving the overall emotional wellbeing of the individual. For that this quantitative study was conducted to explore the impact of personality traits and negative expressivity on psychological distress among university students. Participants of the current study comprised of 150 students (Male n= 80; Female n= 70) who were approached from different educational institutes though convenient sampling technique. The measures of the study comprised of Big Five Inventory, Brekely Expressivity Scale and Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS). Major findings of the study indicated that extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness has positive and neuroticism has negative relation with psychological distress i.e. depression, anxiety and stress whereas, negative expressivity has negative relationship with psychological distress i.e. depression, anxiety & stress. The regression analysis highlighted that personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, & openness) explained 5% variance in depression, 10% variance in anxiety and 9 % variance in stress. The value of regression analysis highlighted that negative expressivity explained no variance in psychological distress. Mean differences on T-test showed that female scored higher on extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness and negative expressivity whereas male scored higher on psychological distress. This study has important implications in clinical setting.