Personality and unrestricted sexual behavior: Correlations of sociosexuality in Caucasian and Asian college students

The goal of this study was to explore if and how personality characteristics are associated with sociosexuality (i.e., individual differences in the willingness to engage in sex outside the context of a committed relationship). Toward this end, we used correlation, multiple regression, and path analysis to examine the associations of sociosexuality with: (1) the normal-range personality traits of the five-factor model, (2) a sexual attitude\affect dimension called erotophobia-erotophilia, and (3) ego development. The sample consisted of 350 Asian and Caucasian college students. Our final path model indicated that, regardless of ethnicity, extroversion, low agreeableness, and erotophilia were direct predictors of unrestricted sociosexuality. Furthermore, openness was an indirect predictor of sociosexuality through its association with erotophilia. However, our final path model also included ethnic differences. Specifically, in the Caucasian sample low agreeableness and openness were significant predictors of erotophilia, but in the Asian sample low neuroticism and openness combined to predict erotophilia. Finally, an interaction was observed between ethnicity and ego development in predicting unrestricted sociosexuality. For our Caucasian sample, increases in ego development were negatively correlated with unrestricted sociosexuality, while for Asians, increasing levels of ego development were not associated with sociosexuality. In other words, as ego development increases, Caucasians become more like Asians in that they are more sexually constrained or restricted. In the conclusion, we offer explanations of the results and discuss findings in terms of several theories of human sexual behavior. (C) 1997 Academic Press.