Genetic association of sexual coercion with reproductive and psychiatric traits
Creators: name: Jern, Patrick
name: Verweij, Karin
name: Pasman, Joëlle
name: Androvičová, Renáta
name: Zietsch, Brendan
Publisher: name: OSF Registries
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Psychiatric and Mental Health
subject: Medicine and Health Sciences
subject: Biological Psychology
subject: Mental and Social Health
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology
subject: GWAS
subject: externalizing traits
subject: genome wide association study
subject: internalizing traits
subject: mating efforts
subject: polygenic risk scores
subject: polygenic scores
subject: psychiatric traits
subject: psychotic traits
subject: reproduction
subject: sexual aggression
subject: sexual coercion
subject: sexual drive
subject: sexual violence

description: Sexual coercion (SC) is a potentially highly traumatizing interpersonal event with significant mental health and economic consequences (Dworkin, 2020). Various perspectives exist regarding individuals who engage in SC, differing in their emphasis on the roles of sexual arousal, individual psycho(patho)logy, situational factors, and society/culture (reviewed in McPhail, 2016). Despite extensive research, our understanding of SC remains limited, as evidenced by ongoing and controversial debates regarding its classification in psychiatric manuals (Holoyda &amp; Blum, 2023). Theories of SC can be broadly classified into two camps: those viewing SC as a result of normal sexual drive—argued by some authors to be inherently aggressive—disinhibited through social, cultural, or situational factors (McPhail, 2016), and those considering it an expression of atypical sexual drive, either adaptive, as seen in "high-mating-effort" reproductive strategies (Thornhill &amp; Palmer, 2001), or non-adaptive, influenced by psychiatric conditions such as problematic substance use, personality disorders, or paraphilic disorders (Boonmann et al., 2015). To delve deeper into both perspectives, we will investigate the genetic associations of various forms of sexual coercion (behavioral, fantasy, sadism) with reproductive traits (such as puberty onset, testosterone levels, and mating effort) and psychiatric traits (such as externalizing, internalizing, and psychotic tendencies). Previous attempts to quantify the relationship between sexual coercion, psychopathology (Eher, Rettenberger &amp; Turner, 2019), and sex drive (a)typicality (Seto et al., 2012; Harris et al., 2012) have been hindered by small sample sizes, low prevalence of studied phenotypes in the population (lack of statistical power), samples of convenience (e.g., forensic, university-based), and a narrow scope of pre-selected correlates of interest, making generalizability of findings difficult. This is where genetics becomes useful. Using polygenic scores from existing large-scale, adequately statistically powered genome-wide association studies, it is possible to create polygenic scores in another smaller dataset and test the genetic correlations. This approach offers an opportunity to study links between phenotypes that are rarely studied together and phenotypes with low prevalence. Our aim is to better understand why people engage in sexual coercion by examining its genetic correlation with reproductive and psychiatric traits.