Can you think of anything that would make you more likely to talk about safe sex with your partner/potential partner?
·
The Frequency of STD's/Being More Informed·
Being Sober and Knowing the Person on a More Personal Level·
Being Better Friends·
Feeling Completely Comfortable With Them/Degree of Openness·
If Someone You Knew Got Pregnant or an STD·
How Long I have Known the Person/Where the Relationship was Going·
If I Suspected Cheating·
If I Wasn't Embarrassed·
If I Knew They Were Comfortable Talking About it·
My Partner's Sexual History·
If My Parents Had Made Me Feel Comfortable About it·
Having Tried Unprotected Sex BeforeHow well educated do you think our youth is about sexually transmitted diseases (STD's), and what could improve this education?
·
Well-Educated (n = 19) 56%·
Not Well-Educated (n = 13) 38%·
No Comment (n=2) 6%·
Start at Younger Age·
Bring Professionals Into Schools to Talk·
Improve Home Education 'Parental Participation·
Have More Classes at Public Schools·
Need to Teach it at the Junior and Senior Levels in High School
Talking About Safe Sex:
The Role of Expectations and Experience
Hodges, Klaaren &Wheatley, in press
How are safe sex discussions different from other behaviors?
* Shortage of models and scripts of how safe sex discussions should go.
·
Attempts at educating the public about how to discuss safe sex may be carried out in an environment that is much more informal than the context in which real discussions occur.·
Researchers focus on the dissonance between "word and deed."
What is self-efficacy and how is it related to safe sex practices?
·
self efficient, self control or self effective.·
the feeling that one is capable of exercising control over one's safe sex related outcomes.·
Knowledge-Behavior Inconsistencies. One might know the risk, but choose to have unsafe sex anyway.* Self-efficacy has been linked to higher condom usage.
This study examined how affective expectations and objective experience influenced female college students' evaluations of discussions of safe sex practices and willingness to engage in future discussions.
They explored the idea that some possible ways to encourage future discussions of safe sex would be to provide people with positive experiences in this realm and positive expectations that future discussions would go smoothly.
They manipulated 2 variables- Experience and Expectations.
METHOD
Why did the researchers choose to use female subjects?
·
The rate of new AIDS cases is growing faster for women, than men.·
Discussing condom usage is important for women, given that men only have to put one on, whereas women who are sexually involved with men must convince someone else to put one on to protect themselves.79 female students served as participants, but only 69 were used. What role did the
confederate play?The
confederate was a male posing as another participant.
PROCEDURE
Participants were told that they would be having a discussion with another participant about safe sex.
When they arrived they found a male confederate posing as the other participant.
The experimenter(F) would come in and explain that they were to discuss safe sex behaviors in the form of a Q&A session for a half hour using a structured interview and then they would fill out a questionnaire about their feelings. In order to simulate some of the self-consciousness of real life-they were told they were being videotaped (which was not true).
The confederate was always the interviewee, although it appeared to be random.
The participants recorded the confederate's answers (which seemed spontaneous, but were actually memorized scripts depending on experimental condition).
How did the researchers manipulate experience?
·
positive experience condition. Pleasant and comfortable script.·
negative experience condition. Awkward and difficult script. The same questions and answers were used for both conditions.How did the researchers manipulate expectations?
* when the experimenter re-entered the room, the participants in the control expectation condition were given no further information. The positive expectation condition participants were given info. to lead them to believe that the safe sex discussion would only get easier and more pleasant. They were shown graphs and fabricated responses to punctuate the effectiveness of the study.
Now the participants filled out a questionnaire assessing how comfortable they felt. They were also asked "If you had an option to be in this experiment again, how likely would you be to participate?" And some background safe sex experience Q's.
FOLLOW-UP MEASURE
Two weeks later they were contacted by phone by a different experimenter who was unaware of their assigned conditions. The participants were asked how willing they would be to participate again on a scale of I to 7 (no way/definitely). They were also asked some evaluative Q's about how comfortable, pleasant, smooth, etc. the first session was. The participants were then given a complete explanation of the study including the deceptive use of the confederate.
Results
-two main effects:
1 )expectation
2)experience
-participants rated experiment more positive not only when they had a positive experience, but also when their expectations about discussing safe sex were positive.
-expectation and experience had independent effects on rating of the experience.
-explored effects of prior experience:
-sexually active participants more likely to participate in future, as well as those who had prior experience discussing safe sex.
-positive expectations had a greater effect on participants who had no prior experience discussing safe sex than those who had experience
-suggests that providing people with positive experiences to practice discussing safe sex can improve their attitude toward future discussions (with their actual partner, etc.)
-suggests that providing people with models on how to comfortably discuss safe sex may be crucial to their experience and further sexual discussions.
-study also found that influencing expectations not only affected their willingness to participate later on, but also their retrospective evaluations of the discussion they already had. (similar to study by Klaaren et al., 1994)
-expectations could be used to influence those who have
already had a negative experience discussing safe sex.
-although findings important, some limitations to the study:
-lacking aspects of the "heat of the moment"
-no behavioral follow-up measures
Loewenstein, Nagin, & Paternoster
(1997)
The effect of sexual arousal on
expectations of sexual forcefulness
Criminal acts à arousal of emotions
Excitement
Lust
Anger
"Empathy Gap"
When in a "cool" unemotional state, it is difficult to predict how you will behave in a "hot" emotional state.
HYPOTHESIS:
Sexually aroused individuals will be more able to imagine themselves behaving in a sexually forceful manner than those who are unaroused.
Method/Procedure:
80 males-University of Maryland
3 Conditions:
Immediate Arousal
No Arousal
Prior Arousal
Immediate Arousal: Playboy
No Arousal: Sexually neutral ads
Prior Arousal: Playboy, but finish experiment next day
What does this mean?
* For all of the sex-related dependent variables, participants in the prior arousal condition predicted the lowest levels of sexual forcefulness.
* As predicted, individuals who were sexually aroused were more likely to imagine that they would behave in a sexually forceful manner on a date.
Drunk Driving Senario Why?
Every subject read both the Susan story and the Drunk Driving story.
After viewing the respective range of pictures (arousal, non-arousal or no pictures), as a control, the non-sexual context of the drunk driving senario should not be affected if aroused.
* None of the conditions approach significant values in the drunk driving senario. Thus, as expected,