Sex as a risk and pregnancy avoidance

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186 HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY
health education and self-protection. This shift has resulted in a psychological literature
on sex as a risk both in terms of pregnancy avoidance and in the context of STDs/HIV
preventive behaviour. However, studying sexual behaviour is not straightforward from
a psychological perspective as it presents a problem for psychologists – a problem of
interaction.
Sex as interaction
Social psychologists have spent decades emphasizing the context within which
behaviour occurs. This is reflected in the extensive literature on areas such as conformity to majority and minority influence, group behaviour and decision making, and
obedience to authority. Such a perspective emphasizes that an individual’s behaviour
occurs as an interaction both with other individuals and with the broader social
context. Sex highlights this interaction as it is inherently an interactive behaviour.
However, health psychology draws on many other areas of psychology (e.g. physiological, cognitive, behavioural), which have tended to examine individuals on their
own. In addition, psychological methodologies such as questionnaires and interviews
involve an individual’s experience (e.g. I felt, I believe, I think, I did). Even if individuals discuss their interactions with other individuals (e.g. we felt, we believe, we
think, we did), or place their experiences in the context of others (e.g. I felt happy
because she made me feel relaxed), only their own individual experiences are accessed
using the psychological tools available. Therefore, sex provides an interesting problem
for psychologists. Sex is intrinsically an interaction between individuals, yet many
areas of psychology traditionally study individuals on their own. Furthermore, the
recent emphasis on sex as a risk to health and resulting attempts to examine individuals’ competence at protecting themselves from danger, may have resulted in a
more individualistic model of behaviour. This problem of interaction is exacerbated by
the psychological methodologies available (unless the researcher simply observes two
people having sex!). The following theories of sexual behaviour both in the context of
pregnancy avoidance and STD/HIV preventive behaviour illustrate the different ways
in which psychologists have attempted to deal with the problem of the interaction.
They highlight the problem with adding both the relationship context (e.g. the interaction between individuals) and the wider social context (e.g. social meanings, social
norms) onto the individual (e.g. their beliefs and knowledge). They also raise the
question of how much can and should psychologists be concerned with the context of
individual behaviour?
Sex as a risk and pregnancy avoidance
A focus on sex for pleasure and an emphasis on sex as a risk has resulted in a literature
on contraception use and pregnancy avoidance. Psychologists have developed models in
order to describe and predict this behaviour.
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