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

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Abstract

Three experiments supported the idea that alcohol fosters sexual risk-taking in men and women, in part, through its effects on sexual arousal. In Experiment 1, increasing alcohol dosage (target blood alcohol levels of .00, .04, .08%) heightened men’s and women’s risk-taking intentions. Alcohol’s effect was indirect via increased subjective sexual arousal; also, men exhibited greater risk-taking than women. In Experiment 2, an extended dosage range (target blood alcohol levels of .00, .06, .08, .10%) heightened men’s risk-taking intentions. Alcohol’s effect again was indirect via subjective arousal. Physiological sexual arousal, which was unaffected by alcohol, increased risk-taking via increased subjective arousal. In Experiment 3, alcohol increased women’s risk-taking indirectly via subjective arousal, but alcohol-attenuated physiological arousal had no effect on risk-taking. Implications for alcohol myopia theory and prevention interventions are discussed.

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Notes

  1. The main rationale for the age range is to bracket ages at which men and women are highly likely to engage in risky sexual behaviors. The range represents a balance among four concerns: minimum drinking age, age of appreciable risk, enhanced external validity, and reduced threat to internal validity. Therefore, although the selected range constrains generalizability, it captures an age of risk, it enables greater generalizability than is usual in experiments with college samples, and yet it does not allow age to become a potential source of excessive error variance.

  2. Potential participants were excluded if they reported having been told by a professional that they had a problem with alcohol, ever seriously concerned about their own drinking, or treated or advised to seek treatment for drinking. For callers screened across studies, approximately 2% of women and 3% of men were excluded on the basis of these three problem-drinking items.

  3. The total amount of beverage consumed was based on sex, bodyweight, and beverage condition. For example, based on our formula for the high dose condition, a 150 lb man would receive 704 ml of total beverage and a 150 lb woman would receive 589 ml of total beverage.

  4. Research has shown that alcohol’s effects on many dependent measures vary based on BAL limb (Pohorecky, 1977). Alcohol effects assessed at a particular BAL on the ascending portion—or “limb”—of the alcohol metabolism curve when the BAL is rising are distinguishable from effects assessed at an equivalent BAL on the descending limb when BAL is falling. Consequently, failure to control for BAL limb in alcohol experiments introduces unnecessary error variance.

  5. We administered an instrument designed to assess sexual functioning. Unfortunately, however, these data proved uninterpretable because many items assumed regularized access to a sexual partner yet participants were recruited in part on the basis of being “not currently in a committed dating relationship.” Consequently, we were unable to effectively discriminate sexually functional from dysfunctional participants in this sample.

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Acknowledgements

Appreciation is expressed to Dr. Erick Janssen for consultation in plethysmography instrumentation and stimulus selection and to Tina Zawacki, Reasons Project staff, and numerous undergraduate assistants for their aid in data collection. Conduct of this research was supported in part by a Grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (AA13565) to William H. George. Portions of this paper were presented at the 2004 annual meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism, Vancouver, BC.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Box 351525, Seattle, WA, 98195-1525, USA

    William H. George, Susan A. Stoner, Rebecca L. Schacht, Christian S. Hendershot & Kelly F. Kajumulo

  2. School of Social Work, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Kelly Cue Davis

  3. Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Jeanette Norris

  4. Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Julia R. Heiman

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  1. William H. George
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Correspondence to William H. George.

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George, W.H., Davis, K.C., Norris, J. et al. Indirect Effects of Acute Alcohol Intoxication on Sexual Risk-taking: The Roles of Subjective and Physiological Sexual Arousal. Arch Sex Behav 38, 498–513 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-008-9346-9

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