A laboratory examination of risky sexual behavior among female sexual trauma survivors.

Abstract

Sexual violence against women is highly prevalent on college campuses. Survivors of sexual violence often engage in coping strategies such as risky sexual behavior. The present study used a behavioral task to measure sexual risk-taking following experiences of positive or negative affect and an emotion suppression experimental manipulation. Sexually active adult female undergraduates (N = 175) completed measures of sexual traumatization and affective experiences as well as an autobiographical recall task and a delay discounting task for hypothetical sexual outcomes. Half of the participants (n = 87) were asked to suppress their emotional response to the autobiographical recall task. The findings indicate that sexual traumatization had a significant effect on risky sexual decision-making, F(1, 167) = 23.27, p < .001, ηp 2 = .12, but affective condition, F(1, 167) = .57, p = .451, and emotion suppression, F(1, 167) = .69, p = .412, exhibited no significant associations with sexual risk-taking. These findings suggest other factors may underlie the association between sexual trauma and risky sexual behavior, but further research is warranted.