Abstract
Background: Sexting is an increasingly common phenomenon among adolescents and young adults. Some studies have investigated the role of personality traits in different sexting behaviors within mainstream personality taxonomies like Big Five and HEXACO. However, very few studies have investigated the role of maladaptive personality factors in sexting. Therefore, the present study investigated the relationship between Dark Triad Personality Traits and experimental (i.e., sharing own sexts), risky (i.e., sexting under substance use and with strangers), and aggravated sexting (i.e., non-consensual sexting and sexting under pressure) across 11 countries. Methods: An online survey was completed by 6093 participants (Mage = 20.35; SDage = 3.63) from 11 different countries which covered four continents (Europe, Asia, Africa, and America). Participants completed the Sexting Behaviors Questionnaire and the 12-item Dark Triad Dirty Dozen scale. Results: Hierarchical regression analyses showed that sharing own sexts was positively predicted by Machiavellianism and Narcissism. Both risky and aggravated sexting were positively predicted by Machiavellianism and Psychopathy. Conclusions: The present study provided empirical evidence that different sexting behaviors were predicted by Dark Triad Personality Traits, showing a relevant role of Machiavellianism in all kinds of investigated sexting behaviors. Research, clinical, and education implications for prevention programs are discussed.
Highlights
The emergence and spread in the use of the Internet and the smartphones in interpersonal communication, including sexual communication, has increased greatly over the past 20 years
Afterwards, we investigated how the Dark Triad traits (i.e., Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) predicted different sexting behaviors, controlling for biological sex and age
We considered the possible interactions between the demographical variables and the Dark Triad (DT) traits, so we added to the model the interaction terms as six more fixed effects, namely age*Machiavellianism, age*psychopathy, age*narcissism, Sex*Machiavellianism, sex*psychopathy, sex*narcissism
Summary
The emergence and spread in the use of the Internet and the smartphones in interpersonal communication, including sexual communication, has increased greatly over the past 20 years. Some studies have found that sexting behaviors tend to grow with increasing age, from adolescence to young adulthood [1,8]. Some studies have investigated the role of personality traits in different sexting behaviors within mainstream personality taxonomies like Big Five and HEXACO. The present study investigated the relationship between Dark Triad Personality Traits and experimental (i.e., sharing own sexts), risky (i.e., sexting under substance use and with strangers), and aggravated sexting (i.e., non-consensual sexting and sexting under pressure) across 11 countries. Results: Hierarchical regression analyses showed that sharing own sexts was positively predicted by Machiavellianism and Narcissism. Conclusions: The present study provided empirical evidence that different sexting behaviors were predicted by Dark Triad Personality Traits, showing a relevant role of Machiavellianism in all kinds of investigated sexting behaviors. Clinical, and education implications for prevention programs are discussed
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