The study of personality characteristics, self esteem and social support in men and women committing illicit sexual relationship
Introduction: sexual relationships without marriage is accepted or rejected depending on customs and religious beliefs of each country. Iran is a country that because of having religious government rejects people's illicit sexual relationships. Objective: the aim of this study is comparing personality characteristics, self esteem and social support in men and women committing illicit sexual relationship. Method: this research is a kind of EX post facto research. Statistic population of this research is consisted of men and women committing illicit sexual relationship in Rasht Central Prison and ordinary people. The sample used in this research includes 200 subjects (100 subjects committing illicit sexual relationship and 100 ordinary people) that convenience sampling was used for those committing illicit sexual relationship and judgmental sampling was used for ordinary people. Questionnaires of MMPI to study dimensions of personality, Cooper Smith to study self esteem and social support were used in this research. Data analyzing was used by using methods of descriptive and inferential statistics (ANOVA MANOVA and independent t analysis) Findings: data analysis showed that in personality dimensions, there is a significant difference between self esteem and dimensions of perceived social support among men and women in two groups. Conclusion: results of this research show that having personality problem and low self esteem and low amount of perceived social support face men and women having this problem to committing crimes like illicit sexual relationship, compared to those who don't have this problem