Big Five Personality Traits and Sex

Uwe Jirjahn and Martha Ottenbacher

No 720, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: Sexual well-being plays an important role in the quality of life. Against this background, we provide an economics-based approach to the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and various dimensions of sexuality. From a theoretical viewpoint, personality influences sexual well-being not only by how a person feels about sex, but also by how the person behaves in a sexual relationship. Personality shapes information sharing about sexual preferences, the way dissonant sexual preferences of the partners are handled, and the extent to which the person is committed to promises made to the partner. Using a large representative dataset from Germany, we find that personality traits play a role in a person's own sexual satisfaction, in (the self-assessment of) fulfilling the partner's sexual needs and desires, in sexual communication, in actual and desired frequency of sex, and in extradyadic affairs.

Keywords: Big Five Personality Traits; Sexual Satisfaction; Frequency of Intercourse; Sexual Infidelity; Sexual Communication; Family Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 D91 J10 J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/226369/1/GLO-DP-0720.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Big Five personality traits and sex (2023)
Working Paper: Big Five Personality Traits and Sex (2020)
Working Paper: Big Five Personality Traits and Sex (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:720

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().