Promoting Condom Use Among Young People Employing Health and Social Psychology

The best way to prevent the sexual transmission of the HIV virus, which causes AIDS and death, is by using condoms. However, these are still so unpopular and said to reduce sexual sensation and break the sexual mood to the extent that research has even suggested that a rectal microbicide should be found as a potential alternative for preventing the spread of HIV among gay men. A microbicide may indeed be an alternative against the fatality of HIV, but there must be also ways of making condoms become trending and part of sexual pleasure. Thus, this thesis looks at ways of persuading people to use condoms.

Of paramount importance, it was found in this thesis that aiming at altering the variables based on the TPB in order to change people’s condom use is likely to be only partially successful. That is, the present evidence shows that changes from time 1 to time 2, on attitudes, perceived behavioural control and behavioural expectations, but not subjective norms (see Chapter 8), affected condom use with a high risk partner at time 3. A key conclusion is that messages encouraging condom use would gain by targeting people according to their sensation seeking personalities. Sensation seeking influences sexual behaviour such as that HSS (high sensation seekers) are more prone to risky sexual practices (see Chapter 5). Besides, it overwhelms the influence of prior sexual behaviour, and the effects of gender on to expectations and intentions can be accounted for by differences in sensations seeking, too (Chapter 6).

A further reason to include sensation seeking in the forecast of sexual behaviour is that it acts as a moderator in the prediction of intentions and condom use (see Chapter 6), as follows. For LSS (low sensation seekers) anticipated regret is more strongly associated with intentions to use condoms, whilst for HSS behavioural principles are more strongly associated with intentions to use condoms. Intentions to use condoms in risky sexual encounters are more strongly predictive of condom use with affairs among LSS than HSS individuals. Moreover, sensation seeking moderates the impact of persuasive messages encouraging condom use (Chapter 8), such as HSS appear to be mainly persuaded to use condoms by the peripheral route and LSS by the central route of message processing.

In summary, the mere change from time 1 to time 2 and the associations among some variables based on the TPB may be largely irrelevant to overall condom use. Yet, the role sensation seeking plays in sexuality and message processing is crucial in condom use. Therefore, it is advisable to consider personality differences in sensation seeking in the promotion of condom use.