In a new study published in the International Journal of Sexual Health, researchers have uncovered a significant link between components of sexual narcissism and strategies of sexual aggression in both men and women. Specifically, they found that sexual exploitation and sexual entitlement, aspects of sexual narcissism, are predictive of employing certain tactics for sexual aggression.
The study’s findings underscore the importance of understanding sexual narcissism as a risk factor for sexual aggression, pointing to the need for prevention programs that address these underlying personality traits.
Sexual aggression remains a deeply concerning issue, particularly in the college environment, where young adults navigate complex social and sexual landscapes. Previous research has shown a distressing prevalence of sexually aggressive behaviors in college settings, with significant portions of male students admitting to using coercion or taking advantage of incapacitated partners to obtain sex. This study aims to delve deeper into the personality traits that predispose individuals to commit such acts, focusing on the role of sexual narcissism.
Sexual narcissism is characterized by a self-centered perspective on sexual interactions, involving traits like an inflated sense of sexual ability, a feeling of entitlement to sex, a lack of empathy towards sexual partners, and the tendency to exploit others sexually. It reflects a belief in one’s superiority in sexual situations, often at the expense of others.
“Given the high prevalence of sexual aggression, particularly on college campuses, we were interested in the risk factors that predict sexual violence,” explained study author Maximiliane Uhlich, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Basel in Switzerland.
“This is important to be able to identify potential perpetrators and to implement effective prevention programs. Many studies examine what makes individuals vulnerable to experience sexual violence and our study, on the other hand, focuses on what personality characteristics (i.e., sexual narcissism) likely predispose people to engage in sexual violence.”
The study included 508 college students from a mid-sized, urban Midwestern public university, utilizing an online survey to assess sexual behaviors and attitudes. Participants, ranging in age from 18 to 67, were predominantly heterosexual and White/European American. They were asked to complete the Sexual Narcissism Scale and the Sexual Initiation Strategies Scale (SISS), which measures a variety of coercive strategies to initiate sex.
Sexual exploitation, one of the key components of sexual narcissism, was found to significantly predict the use of enticement and pressure strategies. These strategies involve persistent persuasion, manipulation, or continued advances in the face of refusal.
For example, enticement includes tactics such as continuing to touch and kiss a person after they have refused to have a sexual encounter, in hopes that they will change their mind. Pressure includes tactics such as taking a person “somewhere away from others and refusing to take her/him home unless s/he engages in sex.”
On the other hand, sexual entitlement, another facet of sexual narcissism, was associated with more covert forms of sexual aggression. This includes engaging in sexual activities without providing an opportunity for the partner to object, or taking advantage of a partner’s intoxicated state.
“Our study suggests that sexual narcissism does represent one risk factor of perpetrating sexual aggression,” Uhlich told PsyPost. “For instance, sexual entitlement, which reflects an individual’s belief in one’s right to sexual fulfillment, predicts sexually aggressive behaviors such as preventing the victim from objecting (e.g., starting the sexual act while fooling around when they weren’t expecting it) and taking advantage of intoxication (e.g., due to consuming alcohol).”
The study also shed light on gender differences in the relationship between components of sexual narcissism and sexual aggression strategies. For instance, a grandiose sense of sexual skill—a belief in one’s exceptional sexual prowess—was significantly linked to the use of enticement strategies among women, but not men.
Additionally, sexual entitlement influenced the likelihood of engaging in sex without explicit consent more strongly for women than for men. These gender-specific findings suggest that sexual narcissism manifests differently across genders.
“An interesting finding was that sexual narcissism did also predict sexual violence among women,” Uhlich said. “Although women are less narcissistic than men and the prevalence for female perpetrators of sexual violence is much lower, women do use strategies of sexual aggression.”
“Our findings indicated that although there was an overlap, women tend use different sexually aggressive strategies compared to men. This suggests that prevention programs should be tailored towards the different risk factors men and women exhibit.”
Like any study, the new research includes some caveats. Its reliance on self-reported data from a predominantly White, heterosexual sample of college students may not fully capture the complexity of sexual aggression dynamics in more diverse populations.
The researchers also sought to investigate into the link between sexual narcissism components and the use of explicitly non-consensual strategies, such as physical force, but were limited by the low occurrence rates of these behaviors among participants.
In other words, because very few individuals admitted engaging in such direct forms of sexual aggression, there wasn’t enough data to thoroughly explore or make robust conclusions about how sexual narcissism might influence these particular aggressive actions.
“This is only a cross-sectional study, and it relies on self-reports which likely underestimates the true prevalence of individuals having engaged in these sexually aggressive behaviors due to social desirability,” Uhlich explained. “Nevertheless, a noteworthy number of participants in our study did admit having used sexually aggressive strategies highlighting the importance of these findings despite potential limitations in data collection.”
“An important next step would be testing these associations between sexual narcissism and sexual aggression across multiple time points,” Uhlich told PsyPost. “This will help clarify if a narcissistic personality predicts future sexual aggression or if engaging in sexually aggressive behavior makes individuals more likely to become narcissistic later on.”
“Since we now know that sexual narcissism represents a risk factor for sexual aggression a long-term goal would be to examine if it is possible to reduce high levels of sexual narcissism, inspired by some promising research indicating that it is possible to change other personality traits (e.g., conscientiousness) through an intervention.”
The study, “Different Components of Sexual Narcissism Are Differentially Associated With Specific Sexual Aggression Strategies: An Exploratory Study Among Male and Female College Students,” was authored by Maximiliane Uhlich, Zoë D. Peterson, Yi Li, Andrew Brown, Jin Han, and Joseph A. D. McBride.