Sexual Arousal and Implicit and Explicit Determinants of Condom Use Intentions

Kenny Wolfs, Arjan E. R. Bos, Fraukje E. F. Mevissen, Gjalt-Jorn Y. Peters, Jacques J. D. M. van Lankveld

Being sexually aroused may be an important risk factor contributing to sexual decision making. Dual-process cognitive models, such as the reflective-impulsive model of Strack and Deutsch (2004), could be used to explain the effect of sexual arousal on intentions to use a condom. In this study, we investigated whether explicit and implicit attitudes toward condom use can predict intentions to use a condom when participants are sexually aroused and not aroused. In a within-subjects experimental design, male participants (N = 27) watched both a neutral and an erotic movie clip in counterbalanced order. After each clip, participants completed a questionnaire assessing their intentions to use a condom and explicit condom attitudes, followed by a wanting Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald et al., 2003) and a liking IAT to assess their implicit attitudes to unsafe sex. In concordance with the reflective-impulsive model, we found that when participants were not sexually aroused, their intentions to use a condom were solely predicted by their explicit attitudes. However, when they were sexually aroused, intentions to use a condom were predicted by both explicit and implicit attitudes toward condom use.