CLAS: Colby Liberal Arts Symposium

Personality Traits and Hook-up Tendencies Mediated by Social Group Norms

Parker-Reed, SSWAC

The proposed study will examine the effect of personality and social group attitudes and behaviors on an individuals hook-up beliefs and practices. Participants will complete three surveys assessing their personality, their hook-up attitudes and practices, and their social groups hook-up attitudes and practices. To determine personality, we will use the 44-item Big Five Inventory. To determine hook-up attitudes and practices, we will use a survey that targets personal and social attitudes towards the hook-up culture. The survey was creating using the revised Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI-R) along with researcher generated statements. We anticipate that certain personality traits will be effective predictors of an individuals increased likelihood to hook-up: high Extraversion, high Openness to Experience, and low Conscientiousness. Additionally, we hypothesize that we will find a main effect for conformity to social attitudes such that people are likely to mimic their social groups hook-up tendencies. Lastly, we expect that certain personality traits will be predictors of an individuals likelihood to conform to their social groups behaviors regardless of their own attitudes. Specifically, those with high levels of Agreeableness and Neuroticism may be predisposed to this conformity. In addition, we hypothesize that high levels of Extraversion or high levels of Openness to Experience are buffers to the same conformity.

https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/clas/2014/program/50