Personality and Sociosexuality: Exploring Sociosexual Patterns as Predictor of Big Five Traits in Indian University Students

Sociosexuality or willingness to engage in casual sexual relationships has been widely studied in Western populations but remains underexplored in collectivist countries such as India. The literature review highlights evolutionary psychology and social learning theory as key frameworks with prior studies linking Big Five traits to sociosexuality such as extraversion and openness to experience, which are positively associated (Olivera-La Rosa et al, 2024). Low conscientiousness and low agreeableness are critical predictors of unrestricted sociosexual orientation (Chen et al., 2024). The study investigates how the Big Five personality traits predict sociosexuality among university students in India. The hypotheses predicted H1: Extraversion will be positively correlated with sociosexuality; H2: Agreeableness will be negatively correlated with sociosexuality; H3: Conscientiousness will be negatively associated with sociosexuality; and H4: Neuroticism will be positively correlated with sociosexuality. H5: Openness to experience will be positively correlated with sociosexuality. A quantitative method was employed with a sample size of 100 university students completing the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory-Revised (SOI-R) and Big Five Inventory (BFI-44). Regression analysis revealed only Agreeableness significantly predicted sociosexual desire (β = -0.2633, p = .014), while other predictors were not significant. These findings have implications for culturally tailored sexual health programs and relationship counseling in non-western settings.