Are there times when too much of even a good thing like sex brings out the worst in us?
A 2025 Canadian study found a pronounced link between unrestricted sociosexuality (that is, uncommitted sexual behaviour) and both sexual excitation and Dark Triad personality traits. See “Relationships Among Sex, Sexual Orientation, Dark Triad Traits, Sociosexuality, and Sexual Excitation/Inhibition.”
The Dark Triad (DT) traits are a clustre of manipulative, callous, and entitled tendencies. They’re also known as subclinical “narcissism”, “psychopathy”, and “Machiavellianism”.
The links between uncommitted sexual behaviour and DT traits as well as sexual excitation/inhibition showed up in a large undergraduate sample. The findings held true even though the scientists had controlled for age, sex, relationship status, and sexual orientation.
“Results suggest that DT traits, elevated sexual excitation, lower inhibition and bisexuality, facilitate fast life history strategies in both males and females”, said the researchers.
A neuroscientist acquaintance had this to say about this finding,
The Dark Triad (DT) traits—subclinical narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism—are indeed linked to higher sexual impulsivity, lower sexual inhibition, and increased novelty-seeking behaviours. Excessive porn use and frequent orgasms, especially in contexts of immediate gratification or compulsive consumption, could plausibly reinforce these very patterns.
From a neuroscientific perspective, repeated intense sexual stimulation, such as excessive porn use or frequent orgasms, can lead to heightened reward sensitivity and lowered impulse control. This aligns neatly with fast life-history strategies typical of individuals scoring high on DT traits. Essentially, it is a self-reinforcing cycle: DT traits might predispose individuals toward behaviours like excessive porn use, while the repeated stimulation itself might amplify impulsivity and reward-seeking, further enhancing DT-associated behaviours.
It would be fascinating to see direct empirical evidence exploring this loop explicitly—perhaps a future study idea. Exploring how various factors interplay could provide significant insights and contribute to our understanding of these complex behaviors.
Does pursuit of sexual gratification affect our judgment?
Does how we choose to use sex affect our moral compass – perhaps in ways of which we are unaware? It’s too soon to rule out this possibility.
A 2019 study found that the single trait that best predicts freer sociosexuality is the Dark Trait of higher psychopathy scores. As we pointed out in an earlier blog post about that study,
The primary characteristics of psychopaths do not top the list of what most of us hope for in an intimate partner. They are: coldness, lack of empathy and remorse, need for continuous stimulation, inability to delay gratification, lack of long-term goals, impulsivity, and a lack of commitment.
These unappealing characteristics make so-called “short-term mating” the ideal strategy for those who tend toward psychopathy. Of course, given the benefits of intimacy and trusted companionship, do we really want to allow today’s sexual-health professionals to persuade us that psychopaths’ [“sex positive”] priorities are healthy sexual priorities?
While mental health professionals often assume “traits” are fixed and innate, it is also well known that behaviours that are reinforced (that is, rewarded and repeated) grow stronger. Might researchers find rather different associations if subjects explored Synergy for an extended period?
Calibrating our inner moral compasses
Some of us arrive on the planet with brains that make us more impulsive or prone to overvaluing novelty and other forms of stimulation, thus skewing our moral compasses. However, it’s likely that most of us are susceptible to lingering moral compass malfunction (that is, distortion of limbic tone) in one circumstance: Engage in too much intense stimulation and an often unwelcome genetic programme kicks in for a time: the binge programme.
Let’s say you discover a racy online chat room or an erotic-dancing bar. Surrounded by all those potential mates, your brain releases extra dopamine (“Yes!”), colouring your perceptions and often your judgment for a time. In fact, today’s opportunities to be turned-on by novel, hot potential mates, synthetic sexual stimuli and hyper-stimulating junk food register as so valuable to many brains that they automatically suppress their sensitivity to keep their owners seeking more goodies. Instead of feeling greater satisfaction, such folks often experience growing malaise.
These subtle, but very real, brain changes occur without conscious awareness. To restore equilibrium and sound judgment, they need time without intense stimulation, (but, preferably, lots of affection or friendly interaction). Until they’re back to normal, even a beloved may look…unsatisfying.
People are not bad people because they express Dark Traits and violate their moral codes under extreme, neurochemically-generated pressure. Many simply need to restore their equilibrium, so their compasses once again align with their true values. This recalibration can take weeks or even months.
Avoiding extreme stimuli sustains (or restores) balance. This is why many of the world’s spiritual traditions focus on brain-balancing techniques such as meditation, qi gong, diet, devotion, prayer, service, questing, generosity and careful management of sexual desire (Synergy). Add to that list daily, non-goal-oriented affection. Such tools can be surprisingly effective at keeping our inner compass aligned with who we really are.
