By Scott A. Mcgreal, www.psychologytoday.com View Original July
25th, 2013
A recent study on the psychological profile of BDSM (bondage
and discipline, sadism-masochism) practitioners has attracted a great deal of
media attention, with headlines proclaiming that “S&M practitioners are
healthier and less neurotic than those with a tamer sex life.” Although BDSM
has often in the past been thought to be associated with psychopathology, the
authors of the study argued that practitioners are generally psychologically
healthy, if not more so in some respects, compared to the general population.
However, it should be noted that most of the apparent psychological benefits of
being a practitioner applied to those in the dominant rather than the submissive
role. Additionally, the study findings need to be treated with some caution
because it is not clear that the comparison group is a good representation of
the general population.
It takes a rare woman to be a dominatrix
Is BDSM normal?
The practice of BDSM carries with it a certain amount of
social stigma (Bezreh, Weinberg, & Edgar, 2012), although the recent
popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey[1]might be a sign of increased mainstream acceptance.
Health professions have long had a tendency to view the practice as
pathological and even perverted. Common assumptions about people who
participate in BDSM are that they psychologically anxious and maladjusted; that
they are acting out a past history of sexual abuse; and that they are
attempting to compensate for sexual difficulties. However, the small amount of
research evidence available suggests that these assumptions are probably not
true. For example, a telephone survey conducted in Australia found that people
who had participated in BDSM in the previous year were not more distressed than
others; were not more likely than others to have ever been sexually coerced;
and did not report more sexual difficulties (Richters, De Visser, Rissel, Grulich,
& Smith, 2008). However, to be fair to the mental health profession, the
current edition of DSM only considers sadism and masochism as mental disorders
if they cause the person clinically significant distress or a non-consenting
person has been involved. So BDSM practiced between consenting persons who are
happy with what they are doing is not officially considered pathological.
What are BDSM practitioners like?
There has not been a great deal of research examining the
psychological characteristics of BDSM practitioners, so the aim of a recent
study (Wismeijer & van Assen, 2013) was to compare BDSM practitioners with
people from the “normal” population on a range of personality traits. A good
description and critique of the study can be found here. BDSM practitioners
were recruited from a Dutch BDSM web forum. Comparison participants were
recruited through notices concerning “online secrecy research.” These were
obtained through a variety of sources including a popular Dutch women’s
magazine and a website that allows visitors to post their secrets. I have some
concerns about whether the comparison group is a good representation of the
general population, which I will return to in due course.
The study compared the BDSM practitioners and the control
group on the Big Five personality traits – neuroticism, extraversion, openness
to experience, conscientiousness, and agreeableness – as well as on rejection
sensitivity, relationship attachment styles, and subjective well-being
(happiness) in the past two weeks. People in the BDSM group were also broken
down into ‘doms’, ‘subs’, and ‘switches’, based on their respective
preferences, to allow further comparisons. There were noticeable gender
differences in how people assorted into these roles, which are illustrated in
the pie charts below. Among females, over three-quarters were subs, switches
were a distant second in popularity, while doms were very much in the minority.
Roles were a little more evenly spread among the males, although doms were most
popular (who made up nearly half), followed by subs (just over a third) and
then switches. This suggests that female BDSM practitioners are more likely
than males to prefer gender-typical roles.
Comparing the BDSM group as a whole with the controls gives
a rather favourable impression of practitioners. The BDSM group as a whole were
on average more extraverted, open to experience and conscientious, and less
neurotic, as well as less sensitive to rejection, more securely attached, and
higher in subjective well-being than the comparison group. On the less
favourable side though, the BDSM group was less agreeable. High extraversion
and low neuroticism tend to be associated with greater overall happiness, so it
is not surprising that people with these traits appear psychologically secure
and to have high subjective well-being. However, an overall comparison between
practitioners and non-practitioners is actually misleading to some extent
because when doms, subs, and switches were compared to the control group, and
with each other, the results were more uneven. A more detailed examination of
these differences shows some interesting patterns.
Openness to experimentation
Each of the three BDSM groups scored higher than the
controls on openness to experience, so it is fair to say that practitioners
generally tend to be more open-minded. This is not surprising, as openness to
experience is associated with willingness to experiment with unusual and
unconventional behaviours. Openness to experience is also associated with a trait
called sexual sensation-seeking which relates to a desire to be sexually
uninhibited and to explore novel sexual experiences (Gaither & Sellbom,
2003). I find it interesting in this regard, that the Australian survey
mentioned earlier found that people who participated in BDSM had experienced a
wider range of sexual practices, and had a greater number of lifetime sexual
partners compared to non-participants. In fact, BDSM participants were
significantly more likely to claim to have had 50 or more sex partners in their
lives, and to have participated in group sex. This would indicate that people
into BDSM tend to be very open to sexual experimentation generally (or perhaps
that they are prone to wild exaggeration!).
Love of discipline?
Both doms and subs, but not switches for some reason, scored
higher than controls on conscientiousness. Conscientiousness is a broad trait
related to self-discipline and has two major aspects related to orderliness and
achievement striving respectively. The study did not examine whether either of
these aspects were more prominent in BDSM practitioners. However, I would
suspect that people who are attracted to BDSM probably have a high need for
orderliness, and have a fond appreciation of rules and boundaries. Whether they
have a high need for achievement or not remains to be seen. Going further,
perhaps subs are the sort of people who prefer to have discipline and order
provided for them, while doms are the sort who like imposing rules and
structure on others. This difference in preference for controlling or being
controlled may well relate to differences in agreeableness between these two
groups.
Disagreeable dominants, sweet submissives
Agreeableness is related to overall pleasantness and
consideration for the comfort of other people. Subs and switches actually did
not differ from the control group in agreeableness. However, doms were lower
than both the controls and the subs in agreeableness. People who are low in
agreeableness tend to be tough rather than tender minded, are willing to make
hard decisions, and tend to be bossy and demanding in the way they relate to
others. Thus it would seem that people who are into BDSM generally prefer the
role that fits their own level of agreeableness. Tough, domineering people
would seem to prefer the dominant role, while those who are more tender and
willing to please naturally fit into the submissive role. I found this
particularly interesting because it suggests that doms have found a way to
express their disagreeableness in a way that is actually welcomed and
appreciated by their submissive partners. This is in contrast to more ordinary
disagreeableness in everyday life which is usually seen as annoying and rude.
Nasty or nice? Could it be both?
I have elsewhere come across the idea that people into BDSM
like to explore roles that are the opposite of their day-to-day roles, e.g.
those who are accustomed to ordering people around are attracted to the
submissive role (see here and here for example). The thinking behind this is
that such people like to have a way of compensating for the pressure of command
and experiencing a sense of relief from the burden of being responsible for
others. However, the findings in this study would seem to suggest that the
majority of practitioners are drawn to roles that reflect rather than
compensate for their normal personalities. Perhaps, there is a minority
subgroup of people who go against this trend, but further more detailed studies
would be needed to test if this is true.
Regarding extraversion, the only significant difference was
that subs were more extraverted than the control group. Extraversion is related
to both sociability and assertiveness. I therefore found it surprising that the
doms were not higher on extraversion (due to the assertiveness component) than
other groups. Why subs were higher on extraversion is not totally clear.
Perhaps they have a particularly friendly outgoing nature. Extraversion is also
related to excitement seeking, so perhaps subs find the attention they receive
and the unpredictability of participating in role-playing satisfies this need
for excitement. More detailed surveys would make this clearer.
Calm and in control
The Big Five personality trait that has been most strongly
linked to mental health versus pathology is neuroticism (Malouff,
Thorsteinsson, & Schutte, 2005). As an illustration, in the BDSM study,
neuroticism had large positive correlations with anxious attachment, need for
approval, and sensitivity to rejection, and a large negative correlation with
subjective well-being. Perhaps the most striking finding of this study is that
the doms were significantly lower in neuroticism than all the other groups, and
this was the statistically largest difference between groups. Doms also scored
lower in rejection sensitivity and need for approval compared to subs and the
control group, while the latter two groups did not differ from each other in
either of these measures. Furthermore, the doms scored higher in subjective
well-being than all the other groups as well. Subs and switches did not differ
from the control group in neuroticism or subjective well-being. Rejection
sensitivity and need for approval, like neuroticism, are negatively correlated
with subjective well-being, so the fact that doms scored low on these measures
may well account for their high levels of subjective well-being.
High neuroticism is associated with self-conscious emotions,
such as guilt, shame, and embarrassment, as well as a host of other negative
emotions. People who are low in neuroticism therefore tend to be relatively
untroubled by these feelings. Perhaps people who prefer the dom role tend to be
those who are relatively shameless, self-confident, not easily embarrassed, and
who do not feel guilty or shy about inflicting punishments during their
role-plays. Additionally, they do not seem to be overly concerned about seeking
other people’s approval, but instead may expect other people to gain their
approval instead. This would seem to fit well with the role they play in BDSM
where they demand obedience from the sub.
What about honesty-humility?
The desire to obey and be subjugated leads to consideration
of a personality trait not discussed by Wismeijer and van Assen’s study. Some
researchers have proposed that there is a sixth factor of personality, known as
honesty-humility, that is separate and distinct from the more well-known Big
Five factors (Bourdage, Lee, Ashton, & Perry, 2007). One intriguing
possibility is that subs might score particularly high on this factor. Subs
seek self-abasement and humiliation in their role-playing. Although humiliation
and humility are not the same thing, it seems intuitively plausible that they
are related. Furthermore, doms might be the opposite, possessing a desire to
feel superior to others. Research could confirm whether subs are higher than
average, or indeed whether doms are lower than average in this important trait.
Role-playing games are popular activities
But did the control group provide a fair comparison?
To summarise briefly, the findings of the BDSM study suggest
that practitioners in general are open-minded about having unusual experiences,
and tend to be self-disciplined people. However, most of the psychological
benefits claimed to be associated with BDSM, such as low neuroticism, more
secure attachment and higher subjective well-being belong to doms rather than
subs or switches. However, subs were more extraverted than the other groups. On
the other hand, doms appear to be more disagreeable than other people, which
seems to suit them in their preferred role. This seems all well and good,
however I am concerned that the control group might or might not be a good
representation of the general population. The control group was largely drawn
from a website recruiting people for research into secret keeping. There are
all sorts of reasons that people keep secrets, and generally speaking it is
normal to do so occasionally. However, some people have particularly secretive
personalities where they feel that there are parts of themselves that they
would prefer not to reveal to other people due to shame or fear of rejection.
The trait of being secretive in this way, known as self-concealment, is associated
with high neuroticism and low subjective well-being (Wismeijer & van Assen,
2008). It is possible that people who feel drawn to use websites where they can
post secrets anonymously or who are willing to participate in secrecy research
might have elevated levels of self-concealment. If this was the case, it is
possible that the control group in the BDSM study might have had higher than
average levels of neuroticism and associated traits such as rejection
sensitivity. If so, this would imply that the BDSM groups who did not differ
from the control group, especially the subs might also have high levels of
neuroticism, rejection sensitivity and so on. This would imply that the doms
were not especially unusual in their personality traits, because they were being
compared to a group with high averages. Currently we do not know if any of
these concerns apply to the control group or not so the study findings need to
be treated with a degree of caution.
Future research should aim to confirm the findings of the
BDSM study with a more representative control group, along with a broader range
of measures of mental health (e.g. screening for drug use and abuse) to explore
to what extent people into BDSM really do enjoy better mental health than other
people. Researchers could also investigate how well adjusted practitioners are
in their lives and relationships in general. For example, are doms, being low
in agreeableness, particularly antagonistic in their relationships in general,
outside of BDSM? Additionally, considering the sexual promiscuity of BDSM
practitioners revealed in a previous survey, it would be important to examine
their attitudes towards risky sexual practices and whether they are at higher
than usual risk of sexually transmitted diseases. BDSM encompasses a wide range
of practices in a variety of contexts, e.g. in committed relationships, as well
as more casual settings. Future research might consider more specific aspects
of how people participate in BDSM to provide a richer understanding of the
psychology of this intriguing area of human life.
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