Female cybersex users: What characteristics of sexual motivations and personality traits?
Résumé
Cybersex includes all observable sexual activities, practiced on the Internet and dedicated to sexual gratification. It includes sex chats, online sex games, pornography consumption, etc. Cybersex could shift towards a compulsive use that would impact the quality and satisfaction of life of its followers. The aim of this research is to explore the profile of female cybersex users in the general population through their sexual motivations, their personality traits, and their quality and satisfaction of life. We recruited 293 women with a mean age of 23.60 (75.73% were heterosexual, 2.20% were homosexual, and 22.05% were bisexual). The majority were in a relationship. The questionnaire included the Compulsive Internet Use Scale adapted to cybersex, the Sexual Functions Scale, the Big Five Inventory-10-Fr, the General Health Questionnaire and the Life Satisfaction Scale. We used k-means cluster analysis, ANOVA, Bravais-Pearson simple correlations, and Pearson chi-squares. We distinguished (a) a cluster with women having low cybersex use, low scores in psychiatric disorders and better life satisfaction, and (b) a cluster with women with high cybersex use, high scores in psychiatric disorders and lower life satisfaction. Women with high cybersex use appear to be characterized by sexual motivations of novelty, dominance, recognition, and conformity, lower extraversion and conscientiousness traits, and greater neuroticism. The characteristics of female cybersex users remain poorly investigated. We provided results that allow the understanding of their profiles in terms of sexual motivations and personality traits. Further studies should be considered to complete our findings.