This paper probes the different adjustment patterns of Iranian university students to ‎the contemporary social and political scene and the degree to which they accept or ‎reject the dominant cultural mores, traditional values, and the institutionalized ‎authority of the society .Two patterns of adjustment are distinguished: the alienated ‎activist who is not politically and socially active, and the passive retreatist who is not ‎likely to participate in social and political activities. The paper further examines two ‎groups of active and passive students to highlight their differences and similarities. A ‎total of 243 subjects have been drawn from university students in Tehran through a ‎disproportionately stratified sampling. Using structured interviews and focused group ‎discussions, detailed information about social ,economic, and demographic ‎backgrounds as well as information on the attitudes, ideations and behaviors of ‎respondent has been collected .In order to measure different psychosocial dimensions ‎of the subject" behaviors and attitudes related to alienation and activism ,24 scales are ‎utilized. Two -tailed Student's t-Test for continuous variables and chi-square analysis ‎for categorical variables are used to compare the two groups. Results indicate that the ‎two groups do not differ by age , marital status ,level of education , and the degree of ‎social and political alienation .However , the groups significantly differ in terms of ‎several background variables and some attitudinal and behavioral characteristics .The ‎activists and passive retreatist differed by gender , socioeconomic status, residency , ‎field of study, employment rate ,grade point average ,membership in organizations , ‎degree of exposure to mass media ,and group size. The difference between the two ‎groups was also statistically significant in terms of political ideology, family ‎structure, self efficacy, need to achievement, self-estrangement, reformism, ‎rebelliousness, altruism, egoism, optimism, pessimism, value isolation, conventional religiosity, moral values, intellectualism, romantictism, and humanitarianism.