Childhood Trauma, Personality Traits, Self-Efficacy, and Relationship Dependency in the Context of Online Dating Application Use

Although online dating applications have assumed an increasingly central role in the formation of romantic and interpersonal relationships, research explaining the use of these applications by jointly considering adverse early-life experiences and psychological characteristics in adulthood remains limited. This study aimed to examine whether adults who use and do not use online dating applications differ in terms of childhood trauma, Big Five personality traits, general self-efficacy, and relationship dependency, and to determine the relative and incremental associations of these variables with application use. The study employed a cross-sectional and correlational design and included 431 adults aged 18–57 years (M_age = 28.24, SD = 7.95); 199 participants (46.2%) reported using online dating applications, whereas 232 (53.8%) reported not using them. The groups were compared using chi-square tests, independent-samples t-tests, MANOVA, and MANCOVA; variables independently and incrementally associated with application use were examined using hierarchical binary logistic regression. Participants who used online dating applications had markedly higher total childhood trauma scores than non-users (d = 1.37), and significant group differences were identified across all trauma subdimensions. The largest unadjusted group difference emerged for childhood sexual abuse (η2p = 0.343). Users had lower levels of general self-efficacy (d = 0.52), and significant group differences were found across all Big Five personality traits, whereas no significant difference was observed in relationship dependency. After controlling for age, gender, economic status, and educational level, the overall multivariate group difference remained significant (Pillai’s Trace = 0.212, F(12, 409) = 9.16, p < 0.001, η2p = 0.212). In the hierarchical logistic regression, childhood trauma made a significant incremental contribution to the model beyond demographic variables. In the final model, gender and childhood sexual abuse remained independently associated with application use; each one-unit increase in the sexual abuse score was associated with increased odds of application use (OR = 1.217, 95% CI [1.114, 1.330], p < 0.001). Self-efficacy showed a more limited independent association (OR = 0.966, p = 0.048), whereas personality traits and relationship dependency were not independently significant. Gender-stratified analyses substantially qualified the pooled trauma findings: the total-trauma difference was nonsignificant among women (d = 0.25, p = 0.134) but large among men (d = 1.78, p < 0.001), while the sexual-abuse difference was present in both genders but substantially larger among men. The findings therefore indicate sample-specific associations with meaningful gender heterogeneity and should not be interpreted as causal, temporal, or representative of particular patterns or motivations of application use.