Abstract
Sexuality is a key predictor of relationship satisfaction, but sexual desire and satisfaction can be difficult to maintain over time. Past research has investigated who might be more likely to experience higher (compared to lower) levels of desire and sexual satisfaction in their relationships. Certain aspects of personality, such as extraversion, have been associated with sexual satisfaction and desire, but evidence linking personality to sexual outcomes has generally been mixed, meaning there is a lot left to learn about how personality is associated with sexual well-being. A promising, yet unexplored, trait that could be associated with higher sexual desire and satisfaction is charisma—a combination of influence and affability that has been identified as a desirable trait when people are selecting a romantic or sexual partner. Across two studies—a cross-sectional study of individuals in relationships (N = 413) and a 21-day dyadic daily experience study (N = 121 couples)—people higher in charisma reported being more communal during sex and reported higher sexual desire and satisfaction. Through higher sexual communal strength, people with a charismatic partner also reported higher daily sexual desire and sexual satisfaction. The effects were largely retained above and beyond general communal strength and Big Five personality dimensions, although in Study 1, charisma was no longer associated with sexual desire and satisfaction when controlling for extraversion. The current findings provide initial evidence that charismatic people tend to be responsive to their partner’s sexual needs, which is associated with higher desire and sexual satisfaction in romantic relationships.
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Notes
In Study 1, we intended on oversampling from 353 to 390 participants to account for potentially losing participants due to our exclusion criteria. Due to the way Prolific recruits participants, when we closed our study we had 453 submissions. After removing participants due to incompleteness or not meeting our eligibility criteria, the remaining sample was 413 participants. All participants completed at least 70% of the study, passed attention checks, and were compensated for their participation. We only conducted analyses on the final sample, after applying our exclusion criteria.
Our measure of charisma was moderately skewed in both studies (although the skewness was within acceptable levels based a on cutoff between ± 1; Bulmer, 1979; Hair et al., 2017; Ramos et al., 2017; Tabachnick & Fidell, 2013). Based on a comment from a reviewer, we conducted two sensitivity analyses; one with the top 10% of charismatic people removed and the other with the bottom 10% of charismatic people removed. In Study 1, the results of the sensitivity analyses suggested charisma was significantly associated with sexual satisfaction, desire, and sexual communal strength even when the highest and lowest scoring people on charisma were removed from the study, and the effects were largely similar in magnitude. In Study 2, there was no significant association between actor or partner charisma and sexual satisfaction or desire when the top or bottom 10% of people in charisma were removed from the study, possibly due to the reduced power, and the effects were similar in magnitude. The association between an actor’s charisma and their sexual communal strength remained when the top 10% of charismatic people were removed, suggesting the effect is not driven by those highest in charisma, but was nonsignificant when the bottom 10% were removed.
These additional tests distinguishing charisma from extraversion were not part of our preregistered analyses but were conducted in response to a reviewer’s comment.
Given concerns about confounding within and between-person estimates in a 2-1-1 mediation models (Zhang et al., 2009), we also tested a 2-2-2 model with charisma assessed at background, and sexual communal strength and each outcome aggregated over the course of the diary. The results are the same in the 2-2-2 model as in the 2-1-1 model.
In Study 2, we also ran all of our analyses with “Day” included as a fixed effect; however, the pattern of effects was the same. We also conducted lagged analyses in which we control for outcomes on the previous day, and all of the effects remained consistent.
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This work has been supported by a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) graduate scholarship awarded to Eric Tu and Stephanie Raposo and SSHRC Insight Grants awarded to Amy Muise.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were performed by Stephanie Raposo and Amy Muise, while the data analyses were performed by Eric Tu. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Eric Tu and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Tu, E., Raposo, S. & Muise, A. Leading Better Sex Lives: Is Trait Charisma Associated with Higher Sexual Desire and Satisfaction in Romantic Relationships?. Arch Sex Behav 51, 505–519 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02138-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02138-x