By Manpal Singh Bhogal and Morgan Taylor

Recent research has examined digital dating abuse through an evolutionary lens, finding people who report intrasexual competitiveness engage in digital dating abuse. Here, we replicated this finding and extended the literature by examining the role of the Big Five personality traits in the perpetration of digital dating abuse, which, to our knowledge, has not been examined in relation to digital dating abuse (n=280). This paper reports findings showing intrasexual competitiveness positively predicts the perpetration of digital dating abuse; whereby high intrasexual competition is related to high levels of digital dating abuse. Agreeableness was a negative predictor of digital dating abuse; whereby high agreeableness was related to low perpetration of digital dating abuse. Our findings extend the literature exploring digital dating abuse through an evolutionary lens.

Evol Psychol. 2024 Oct 9;22, 6 p.