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Impulsivity Dimensions and Risky Sex Behaviors in an At-Risk Young Adult Sample

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Abstract

Impulsivity is a personality-based risk factor that has been well studied in relation to risky sexual behavior. Recent conceptualizations of impulsivity have proposed multidimensional facets comprised of premeditation, perseverance, sensation seeking, negative urgency, and positive urgency (UPPS-P model). Prior studies have found that these facets are associated with risky sexual behavior in adolescent and college student samples, but no prior studies have evaluated them in clinical samples. The current study examined how impulsivity-related traits related to two different risky sexual behaviors in a clinical sample of at-risk young adults who had both conduct disorder and substance use disorder symptoms as adolescents (n = 529). Lack of premeditation was also tested as a moderator of the relationship between facets of impulsivity and both risky sex outcomes. Results demonstrated that sensation seeking, negative urgency, and positive urgency were correlated with risky sex behaviors. Additionally, multiple regression analyses indicated that sensation seeking was uniquely associated with the number of sexual partners in the past 5 years, whereas positive urgency was uniquely associated with unprotected sex while under the influence. Finally, a significant interaction between lack of premeditation and negative urgency suggests that at-risk young adults with both high negative urgency and lack of premeditation were the likeliest to have the most sexual partners in the past 5 years. This study adds to the current understanding of the relationship between reward- and affect-driven facets of impulsivity and risky sexual behaviors and may lend utility to the development of interventions for at-risk populations.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by National Institute of Drug Abuse grants R01 DA035804 (PIs: Hopfer, Stallings, & Wall), R01 DA021905 (PIs: Brown & Wall), R01 DA012845 (PI: Hewitt), P60 DA011015 (PI: Hewitt), R01 DA021913 (PI: Hopfer), R01 DA015522 (PI: Hopfer), K24 DA032555 (PI: Hopfer), and National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) grant T32 AA013525 (PI: Riley). Jeremy Luk’s effort was also supported by the Intramural Research Program of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The content of this article is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The sponsoring agencies were not involved in the design, analyses, or development of this article, or the decision to submit this paper for publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. V.A. San Diego Healthcare System, La Jolla, San Diego, CA, USA

    Inga Curry, Ryan S. Trim & Tamara L. Wall

  2. Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, 3350 La Jolla Village Drive (116B), San Diego, CA, 92161, USA

    Inga Curry, Jeremy W. Luk, Ryan S. Trim, Sandra A. Brown & Tamara L. Wall

  3. Health Behavior Branch, Division of Intramural Population Health Research, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Jeremy W. Luk

  4. Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado, Denver, Denver, CO, USA

    Christian J. Hopfer

  5. Institute for Behavioral Genetics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    John K. Hewitt & Michael C. Stallings

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  1. Inga Curry
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  2. Jeremy W. Luk
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Correspondence to Tamara L. Wall.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was collected from all participants (and both assent from participants and consent from the parent/guardian were collected during the baseline data collection in cases when participants were adolescents).

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Curry, I., Luk, J.W., Trim, R.S. et al. Impulsivity Dimensions and Risky Sex Behaviors in an At-Risk Young Adult Sample. Arch Sex Behav 47, 529–536 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-017-1054-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-017-1054-x

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