The Roles of Emotion Regulation, Alcohol Consumption, and Women’s Condom Request Style in Men’s Coercive Condom Use Resistance Intentions

ABSTRACT

Condom use resistance (CUR) remains a significant problem, and many men employ coercive CUR strategies to avoid using condoms with partners who do not consent to unprotected sex. To assess the decision-making process underlying men’s coercive CUR, the present study administered alcohol to assess the effects of alcohol intoxication, condom request style, and emotion regulation (ER) strategies (i.e., cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression) on intentions to use coercive CUR to have unprotected sex during a hypothetical sexual scenario. Sexually active, male social drinkers (N = 297) were randomly assigned to either consume alcohol or remain sober, and to project themselves into a hypothetical sexual scenario during which they received either indirect, direct, or insistent condom requests. Results showed that, although cognitive reappraisal had no relationship with coercive CUR or unprotected sex intentions, expressive suppression’s relationship with intentions to have unprotected sex was mediated by coercive CUR and moderated by alcohol intoxication and condom request. Specifically, suppression was positively associated with coercive CUR among sober individuals who received an indirect condom request only. Such results suggest that sober men with suppressive tendencies may use coercive CUR to regulate negative emotions, such as frustration at not being able to have unprotected sex.

KEYWORDS:

• Condom use resistance
• sexual coercion
• cognitive reappraisal
• expressive suppression
• alcohol intoxication

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by two grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (R37AA025212 and R01AA017608; PI: Davis).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical Standards and Informed Consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation [institutional and national] and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism [R01AA017608,R37AA025212].