An Unbelievable Study Proves—College Students Make Rational Sex Decisions?!

Intercourse is dangerous. It could actually result in emotional ache, privateness issues, undesirable pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and even most cancers. Many younger adults interact in dangerous sexual behaviors, together with faculty college students, who too usually, have intercourse with individuals they don’t know very properly whereas, at instances, drunk or different medicine.  

But a study in Psychological Science, one of many subject’s main journals, concludes that “younger adults make rational sexual selections.” How might revered researchers come to this conclusion? And what does this examine reveal about the best way younger adults make sexual selections?  

Let’s begin with the best way the analysis staff studied sexual choice making. They introduced individuals with hypothetical sexual decisions, between the attractiveness of a potential sexual associate and the chance of contracting a “widespread and treatable STI akin to chlamydia or gonorrhea” from that associate. (I gained’t dwell on this, however it drives me loopy to simply flippantly describe these as widespread and treatable, when a illness like chlamydia is often silent and leads to infertility. However I digress.)  

Right here’s an instance of the kind of selection they requested individuals to make:  

Throughout a collection of such decisions, researchers measured whether or not individuals made constant selections. If an individual solely accepted the next threat of STIs to be with a extra enticing associate, they had been seen by the analysis staff as making rational decisions. This conclusion is unsuitable on extra accounts than I can describe right here. However right here is my largest concern.  

The researchers failed to acknowledge the excellence between mandatory and ample circumstances of rationality. If I make a collection of inconsistent decisions, it’s a superb wager that I’m not making rational selections. Consistency can be thought of as a mandatory situation of rationality. (I do know that that is controversial, and there are in all probability exceptions to this place. However most individuals agree it’s true.)  

However no one I do know of thinks of consistency as a ample situation of rationality. Suppose a pupil goes to a celebration, the place the value of getting a sexual encounter is to play a sport of Russian roulette, with a 1 in 6 probability of loss of life. Suppose we discover that the scholar is persistently keen to have intercourse solely with actually enticing companions. The pupil doesn’t suppose a 1 in 6 threat of loss of life is value it for any individual they don’t discover enticing. Is it, subsequently, rational for this pupil to just accept that probability of loss of life for a quick encounter with somebody they’re attracted to?  

Rational decision-making doesn’t solely require consistency. It will depend on making good judgements concerning the relative advantages and harms of the alternatives one makes. All else equal, it’s rational to have intercourse with individuals you discover enticing (versus unattractive). And, I suppose, it’s rational to keep away from intercourse with a sexy individual in the event that they carry a excessive threat of an STI. However what’s the proper threat of STI to just accept as a way to have intercourse with a complete hotty? Nothing about this examine evaluates whether or not younger adults did a superb job of weighing the harms and advantages of an STI versus the pleasure of a single sexual encounter.  

The Nobel Prize profitable economist Gary Becker gained fame, partly, for proposing a model of rational addiction. Elevate the price of heroin, for instance, and addicts will use much less of the drug proving, to Becker, that such habits is rational. It’s actually necessary to acknowledge that, even when hooked on highly effective medicine, individuals’s decisions are influenced by the associated fee and advantages of utilizing these medicine. That was Becker’s genius—to seek out the sliver of rationality inside this log of irrational habits. However a sliver of rationality doesn’t show that folks’s decisions are, subsequently, utterly rational.  

Returning to the sexual selections of younger adults. There’s clearly one thing rational about consciously buying and selling off the dangers of intercourse with how attracted you’re to a possible associate. However totally rational sexual choice making would take account of the potential harms of an encounter with, say, the dramatic discount of these dangers via use of a condom. It could be considerably rational to keep away from unprotected intercourse with comparatively unattractive companions. It’s much more rational to observe protected intercourse, with no matter associate you select to be with.