Have a High Sex Drive? You Might Be a Sadist, Study Finds [Video]

Your sex drive may be intimately linked to your personality, new research suggests, with certain “dark” personality traits being common among those with the highest libido.

Narcissism—a personality disorder characterized by self-importance and a lack of empathy for others—and everyday sadism—the tendency to derive pleasure, especially sexual pleasure, from inflicting pain—were the strongest predictors of sex drive and porn use.

“Arguably, the most common topic on the news involves people (mostly men) getting into trouble for their sexual behavior,” Delroy Paulhus, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, told Newsweek. “Individual differences in sex drive may play a role. And, given the growing recognition that four ‘dark’ personalities (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, everyday sadism) can be distinguished, we sought to clarify which ones would be accompanied by a high sex drive.”

The study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, assessed sex drive and pornography use across hundreds of Canadian university students while also assessing their adherence …