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The so-called “big five” traits psychologists use to describe human personalities are open-mindedness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Neuroticism, the moody black sheep of the bunch, captures our predisposition toward negative emotions like anger, depression, and anxiety. Now, a new study published in PLOS One suggests it could also be linked to our tendency to indulge in sexual fantasies.
A team led by Emily Cannoot of Michigan State University analyzed data from 5,225 Americans who filled out two questionnaires. The first asked about their sexual fantasy lives, including the type and frequency of any steamy daydreams, while the second measured their big five personality traits.
Read more: “Casual Sex May Be Improving America’s Marriages”
They found that people who scored high for neuroticism also reported experiencing sexual fantasies more frequently. On the other hand, people who scored high for conscientiousness and agreeableness—which measure our bent toward self-discipline and social harmony, respectively—fantasized about sex less often. Somewhat counterintuitively, extraversion and open-mindedness showed no effect on sexual fantasy frequency.
Zooming in on those findings revealed that neurotics who scored particularly high in depression were more likely to indulge in mental sexcapades, while the chaste thoughts of the conscientious and agreeable types were explained by high measures of respectfulness and responsibility.
Surprisingly, studies on sexual fantasies and personality types are few and far between, something the team hopes to remedy going forward, including by looking into how our personalities and sexual fantasies co-develop over time. 
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Lead image: momo sama / Shutterstock
