Early maladaptive schemas (EMSs) are thought to act as templates for information processing that influence individuals’ emotional reactions to life satisfaction.

Thus,the main purpose of the present study was to predict Life Satisfaction with respect to early maladaptive schemas among Iranian college students.

The research population consisted of 1700 students. Three hundred undergraduate students (150 female and 150 male) selected by multiple cluster sampling method. Short questionnaire form of early maladaptive schema (YSQ-SF) and life satisfaction questionnaire were used in this study. For analyzing the data, Pearson correlation, Step wise regression and dependent t were used.

Results of correlation showed negative significant correlation between life satisfaction and early maladaptive schemas including emotional Depravation, Social isolation, Defectiveness/sham, failure, Dependence/incompetence

Vulnerability To harm illness, Subjugation, Self-sacrifice, Emotional inhibition, Unrelenting Standards /hyper criticalness and Insufficient Self-Control / Self-Discipline. Only three subscales Including Abandonment/ Instability, entitlement/ grandiosity, enmeshment/ undeveloped self, showed no significant correlation with life satisfaction. Result of regression analysis revealed that among 15 schemas, emotional Depravation, Defectiveness/sham and Dependence/incompetence schemas were best predictor of life satisfaction. In addition, the results indicated a significant difference between two groups of male and female students in subdivisions such as mistrust/abuse, failure, vulnerability to harm or illness, and unrelenting standards/hypocriticalness.

The findings of this study show that the assessment of EMS based on Young’s conceptualization of EMS can increase our understanding about students problems and interventions should be focused on changing these schemas.