Daily Associations Among Alcohol Intoxication, Partner Familiarity, Participant Effortful Control, Urgency, and PrEP Uptake on Sexual Behavior in Men Who Have Sex with Men

External validity of analogue sexual risk laboratory data.

“…Perceived intoxication from the morning assessments provides an overall subjective estimate of the previous night's level of intoxication accounting for individual differences in tolerance, food intake, etc. Validity of the approach is supported by expected associations with criterion variables in previous research (Maisto, Simons, Palfai, Moskal, & Luehring-Jones, 2021;Simons et al, 2016Simons et al, , 2021. There were two substantial outliers on the subject mean and these were recoded to one unit greater than the nearest outlying value (Tabachnik & Fidell, 2001).…”

“…Self-identified MSM completed an initial phone screen and baseline assessment session. The baseline assessment battery included a range of additional variables not included in this study such as other drug use (Luehring-Jones et al, 2019), personality (Maisto, Simons, Palfai, Moskal, & Luehring-Jones, 2021), and other sexual behavior measures (Tahaney et al, 2020). Inclusion criteria included being a moderate or heavy drinker without recent history of alcohol treatment, identify as gay or bisexual (three or higher on the Kinsey Scale; Kinsey et al, 1948), being sexually active with a male partner at least once in the past 3 months, and not being in a committed monogamous relationship.…”

“…Though work remains to be done, especially with high-risk populations such as MSM, systematic review of alcohol administration studies provides evidence supporting a causal link between alcohol intoxication and sexual decision-making (e.g., condom nonuse, condom negotiation skills; Berry & Johnson, 2018; George, 2019; Scott-Sheldon et al, 2016). The few alcohol administration studies examining the effect of intoxication on sexual risk outcomes in MSM also support a causal effect (Maisto et al, 2012; Maisto, Simons, Palfai, Moskal, Sheinfil, et al, 2021; Wray et al, 2021). The fact that multiple studies across multiple laboratories, samples, and experimental methods show congruence (i.e., a significant association between intoxication and sexual decision-making) provides a first piece of evidence of the external validity of these studies.…”

“…The findings do generalize from one set of experimental conditions to another. In contrast, studies employing intensive longitudinal designs to test associations between intoxication and sexual risk behavior in MSM and other populations have provided mixed findings (Maisto, Simons, Palfai, Moskal, & Luehring-Jones, 2021;Mustanski, 2008;Scott-Sheldon et al, 2010;Simons et al, 2018;Wray, Luo, et al, 2019). Inconsistencies in the literature could signify the association between intoxication and sexual risk behavior at the event level in the natural environment is unreliable, and that intoxication is not a strong enough predictor of sexual behavior in the midst of the many varying contextual factors contributing to sexual decision-making at any given time and situation.…”

“…The present study tests whether, and when, CAI intentions among MSM assessed during an alcohol challenge experiment predict men’s behavior in the natural environment assessed by ESM. In the laboratory experiment, CAI intentions increased as function of intoxication (which was experimentally manipulated) and sexual arousal (not experimentally manipulated; see Maisto, Simons, Palfai, Moskal, & Sheinfil, 2021). Hence, we hypothesized that CAI intentions would predict CAI in the natural environment.…”