Sexting is a phenomenon related to the exchange of sexts, that is texts/photos/videos with sexually provocative contents, through internet, smartphone or social networks. Sexting is becoming more and more popular worldwide. The present project aims to investigate the personality predictors of sexting behaviors in a cross cultural perspective. Differences or similarities in personality traits due to different cultural backgrounds will be explored, accounting also for socio-demographical variables and sexual orientation. Beyond Italy, countries that were already pre-contacted and that agreed to participate includes: Belgium, China, Czech Republic, Malaysia, Philippines, Poland, Russia, Spain, Turkey, Uganda, and USA. More countries will be contacted and included in case this project will receive financial support. Participants will include 250 adolescents (between 14 and 19 years old) and 250 young adults (between 20 and 30 years old) for each country. A survey on line will be administered and the questionnaire will be composed by measures of HEXACO traits, Callous Unemotional Traits, Dark triad traits, the Sexting Behavior Questionnaire, and other information such as age, gender, internet use, sexual orientation and many other records useful to describe participants. A multilevel data analytic strategy will be employed. This study will aim to investigate which individual personality characteristics predict sexting and whether individual predictors vary across countries. The role of age, gender, internet use, sexual orientation and other characteristics will also be considered and taken into account both at the individual and at the country level. Cross cultural investigations in sexting research are very rare, the only published study included European countries. A big effort will be done in order to include countries from Asia, middle-east, south America and Africa which are traditionally less investigated compared to European and north American countries.
It is very likely that different type of sexting behaviors have different personality predictors. However, so far, most of the research has empirically investigated sexting as a monolithic construct despite several theoretical distinction were pointed out in the literature. Again, most of the research that has investigated the personality underpinnings of sexting has mainly relied on the general traits of the Five Factor Model or referred to specific traits (e.g. sensation seeking). Furthermore, the vast majority of the investigations were conducted primarily in Northern American and European countries. Therefore, the present project was designed to fulfill specific gaps in our knowledge and to contribute innovatively to the literature in a number of ways.
First of all, we will adopt a cross cultural perspective aiming to conduct data collection in different countries not only limited to Northern American or European societies. In particular, this study was aimed to investigate (a) which individual personality characteristics predict sexting and (b) whether individual predictors vary across countries. Despite the apparent limitation that samples will hardly be representative of each country population, this cross cultural comparison will nevertheless constitute a strength of the present project. To our knowledge, only one cross cultural study was published in scientific journals and this investigation included only European countries (Baumgartneret al., 2014). Moreover, on the individual level, age, gender, sensation seeking, and internet use were investigated. On the country level, traditionalism, gross domestic product, and broadband internet penetration were investigated. The only personality predictor included was sensation seeking; no other personality traits (like Big Five or HEXACO) were investigated.
Secondly, in this project we will refer to the general model of personality called HEXACO (see Ashton & Lee, 2007; Ashton et al., 2014 for a review), that includes traits such as Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness. While traits such as eXtraversion, Conscientiousness and Openness closely resembles the ones present in the FFM, the traits of Honesty-Humility, Emotionality and Agreeableness differ peculiarly from the FFM traits. Honesty-Humility, in particular, appears to be an interesting possible predictor of sexting behaviors that have a potential malevolent consequences and/or intentions (such as, for instances, sending/posting sexual video/photo of ex-partners or stranger without their consent). To our knowledge, no published research could be found linking HEXACO traits and sexting. One of the few related document we could found is represented by an unpublished dissertation written by Smith (2015), in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Doctor of Education at Liberty University. In this document the author presents a literature review on HEXACO and cyberbullying. The author admits, in his dissertation, that ¿there have been very few studies conducted on personality traits and cyberbullying (Ang et al., 2011; Festl & Quandt, 2013). The HEXACO personality model has only been used in one study profiling traditional bullying (Book et al., 2012). The data showed a significant negative correlation with traditional bullying and the HEXACO personality traits of honesty-humility, emotionality, agreeableness, and conscientiousness (Book et al., 2012). To date, there has not been a single study published using the HEXACO model to profile perpetrators and victims of cyberbullying. There is a definite gap in the literature with respect to the HEXACO personality model and cyberbullying.¿ (Smith, 2015, p.58). This seems particularly true as regards the relationship between HEXACO and sexting. In addition to this, we will consider also the so-called Dark Triad traits (Paulhus e Williams, 2002) and the Callous Unemotional trait (Hare e Neumann, 2008) which were also understudied in the domain of sexting research.
Last but not least, we will administer the Sexting Behaviors Questionnaire (Morelli et al., 2016) which was designed to be more complete of the already existing sexting measures (e.g., Dir, 2012). This reliable and valid measure takes into account a wider and more detailed range of sexting behaviors both from the victim and the perpetrator perspective, considering different form of sexts (e.g. video/photo/text) with different behaviors (e.g. sending, posting), occurring with different media (e.g. internet, smartphone). Moreover, it takes into account the subject of the sexts (i.e. partner, ex partner, friends, someone they know or strangers) and, more importantly, if these sexts were sent with/without their consent. All these information will enable us to test, in a cross perspective, very specific hypotheses regarding the different personality underpinnings of different sexting behaviors that could have not be tested previously.