The effects of acute alcohol consumption, cognitive reserve, partner risk, and gender on sexual decision making.

Abstract

Objective-In past alcohol administration studies, intoxicated college students have been more willing to have unprotected sex with a hypothetical new partner than sober or placebo students. The objective of the present research was to extend past work by examining the effects of gender, cognitive reserve, and partner risk on intoxicated sexual decision making. Method-Before assigning participants (60 women and 60 men) to a drink condition, cognitive reserve was assessed with the reading subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test 3 (WRAT3). After drinking, participants watched a video of a male and female college student in a sexual situation. There were two versions of the video that were identical, except for information that suggested the opposite-gender character had many past sexual partners or only a few. Results-There was a significant interaction between drink condition and cognitive reserve such that intoxicated participants with lower WRAT3 scores were more likely than other participants to indicate that they would have unprotected sex if they were in this situation. Partner risk did not influence participants' willingness to have unprotected sex; however, they were less interested in dating the high-risk partner. Conclusions-As expected, participants with less cognitive reserve made riskier decisions when intoxicated. Unexpectedly, although participants clearly perceived the high-and low-risk partners differently, this did not affect their willingness to have unprotected sex with this hypothetical partner. These findings demonstrate the need for sexually transmitted disease/ HIV prevention programs that go beyond factual presentations and provide students with the skills they need to assess risk realistically and the need for programs with messages tailored for individuals with low cognitive skills. College students experience many negative consequences from heavy alcohol consumption. including academic problems, personal injuries, impaired driving, interpersonal violence, and vandalism (Perkins, 2002). In the area of risky sexual behavior, 16% of a national sample of college students reported that they had sex without a condom when intoxicated at least once during the past school year (American College Health Association. 2005). Several

Indirect Effects of Acute Alcohol Intoxication on Sexual Risk-taking: The Roles of Subjective and Physiological Sexual Arousal

“…Finally, our biolgical sex findings were perfectly consistent with those observed in the other experiments (Abbey et al, 2005;Abbey, Saenz, Buck, Parkhill, & Hayman, 2006): Men reported higher risk-taking than women, and biolgical sex did not interact with alcohol. Compared to women, men's greater willingness to engage in risky sex has generally been attributed to their more liberal attitudes about casual sex (Oliver & Hyde, 1993).…”

Friends Don't Let Jane Hook Up Drunk: A Qualitative Analysis of Participation in a Simulation of College Drinking-Related Decisions

“…Leigh and Aramburu (1996) found that male participants were more sexually aroused throughout the given scenario and more likely to pursue sexual activity. In contrast, Abbey, Saenz, Buck, Parkhill, and Hayman (2006) did not find significant gender differences in terms of sexual arousal. In addition to gender, these scenario-based studies found other individual influences on one's alcohol-fueled sexual decision making: alcohol expectancies and sexual history (Abbey, Saenz, & Buck, 2005), as well as verbal skills and the riskiness of partnering with the opposite-gender character in the scenario (Abbey et al, 2006).…”

The Effects of Alcohol on Crime‐related Memories: A Field Study

“…Meanwhile, we admit that there probably exist other individual difference factors related to alcohol expectancy effects and that may modulate the link between alcohol and memory (e.g. Abbey, 2006;Davis, Hendershot, George, Norris, & Heiman, 2007;Davis et al, 2010). Therefore, future studies should include questionnaires tapping not only alcohol-related expectancies (e.g.…”