The effects of impulsivity, sexual arousability, and abstract intellectual ability on men's and women's go/no-go task performance.
While a number of studies have assessed the role of personality traits, situational variables, and drug use on sexual risk behaviors, fewer studies have employed experimental methods to examine cognitive processes that may underlie risky sexual decision making. This study used a go/no-go paradigm to examine how individual difference variables and sexual arousal influence discrimination learning and sexual and nonsexual decision making. A total of 28 men (M age = 20 years) and 25 women (M age = 19 years) completed self-report measures of impulsivity, abstract intellectual ability, and sexual excitation and inhibition and participated in a laboratory experiment. The experiment consisted of two go/no-go tasks with sexual stimuli and two tasks with neutral stimuli, preceded by either sexually arousing or sexually neutral stimulus presentations. Task performance was measured by totals of false alarms and misses. Individuals high in impulsivity and low in abstract intellectual ability committed more false alarms in conditions involving sexually arousing stimuli. Furthermore, higher sexual excitation scores were linked to more misses. These findings indicate that cognitive processes associated with decision making that occurs in the "heat of the moment" are influenced by a combination of situational and sexual and nonsexual individual difference variables.
Macapagal
Kathryn R
KR
The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. karmacap@indiana.edu
Janssen
Erick
E
Fridberg
Daniel J
DJ
Finn
Peter R
PR
Heiman
Julia R
JR
D001143:Arousal; D001294:Attitude to Health; D003071:Cognition; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007175:Impulsive Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D012309:Risk-Taking; D021841:Safe Sex / Q000523:psychology; D012737:Sex Factors; D012747:Sexual Partners / Q000523:psychology; D012931:Social Environment; D047568:Unsafe Sex / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult