Psychological Factors Leading to Sextortion: The Role of Personality, Emotional Factors and Sexual Needs in Victimisation

Abstract

Sextortion often begins with a perpetrator contacting a victim through social media platforms, dating websites, or messaging applications. Victims share their explicit content, allowing the perpetrator to gain control by threatening to expose this material unless demands are met. The limited extant literature on this topic highlights a vast demographic of victims and serious consequences following victimisation. Given its interactional nature, the current, exploratory study examines psychological factors leading to sextortion. Specifically, personality traits, emotional factors, and sexual needs are investigated as predictors of victimisation. These psychological factors have been much neglected in the literature, despite having strong associations with sextortion-related online behaviours. Utilising data from 89 victims (73 males, 16 females; Mage = 24.73) and 212 non-victims (42 males, 170 females; Mage = 28.55) collected via an online survey, a series of t-tests and regressions were conducted to examine the objectives. Results showed that conscientiousness and emotionality were negatively predictive, and attachment-related anxiety and need for sex were positively predictive of victimisation. A comprehensive model containing these predictors correctly classified 76.1% of cases, indicating potential to measure psychological vulnerability to sextortion. The discussion provides detail for the implications of this research, as well as study limitations.

Keywords: Sextortion, Online Abuse, Online victimisation, Victimisation Risk, Blackmail, Risky Sexting