title: Risk, individual differences, and environment: an Agent-Based Modeling approach to sexual risk-taking.
abstract: Risky sexual behaviors, including the decision to have unprotected sex, result from interactions between individuals and their environment. The current study explored the use of Agent-Based Modeling (ABM)-a methodological approach in which computer-generated artificial societies simulate human sexual networks-to assess the influence of heterogeneity of sexual motivation on the risk of contracting HIV. The models successfully simulated some characteristics of human sexual systems, such as the relationship between individual differences in sexual motivation (sexual excitation and inhibition) and sexual risk, but failed to reproduce the scale-free distribution of number of partners observed in the real world. ABM has the potential to inform intervention strategies that target the interaction between an individual and his or her social environment.
authors: Smith College, Northampton, MA, USA.
authors: Emily
authors: E
authors: Nagoski
authors: Erick
authors: E
authors: Janssen
authors: David
authors: D
authors: Lohrmann
authors: Eric
authors: E
authors: Nichols
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000635:transmission; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009042:Motivation; D012306:Risk; D012309:Risk-Taking; D012725:Sexual Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D012747:Sexual Partners; D012931:Social Environment; D047568:Unsafe Sex