Safer Sex Is No Joke: Women’s Condom Use Self-Efficacy

Abstract

Communication plays a central role in promoting effective condom use. In particular, women’s humorous communication functions to facilitate condom use self-efficacy in heterosexual dating relationships. Results from 189 cisgender women revealed that an affiliative humor style was a positive predictor of willingness to talk to partners about using condoms despite potentially negative consequences and confidence in using assertive communication to bring up the topic of condom use. However, employing an aggressive humor style was a negative predictor of women’s willingness to talk to partners about using condoms despite potentially negative consequences. Overall, greater understanding of humor styles as a means of understanding condom use self-efficacy has substantive pragmatic health-related implications.