REVERSAL THEORY AND THE RISK-TAKING SEXUAL BEHAVIOR OF HOMOSEXUAL AND BISEXUAL MEN.
Contributors: University of Kansas.
Published: 1994
Number of pages: 170
Subjects: Psychology, General.; Psychology, Personality.; Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: Despite more than a decade of education about safer sexual practices or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) preventive behaviors, many gay and bisexual men still report moderate and high risk sexual behavior. Common knowledge about the transmission of AIDS and its deadly effects has not resulted in the consistent application of safer sexual practices. Little is known about the predictors of unsafe sexual behavior. The purpose of this study was to explore the usefulness of Apter's theory of psychological reversals to explain the motivation for sexual risk taking in gay and bisexual men (Apter, 1982, 1989),.

Reversal theory seeks to explain human motives, emotion and personality through an approach called structural phenomenology that focuses on the pattern and structure of experience. Reversal theory attempts to show that various aspects of a broad range of experience and behavior may be explained by certain pairs of opposing states and the reversals that occur between them. Data were collected from 34 subjects in a structured interview format. Subjects reported on two sexual experiences with partners within the last year, one when they participated in safer sex and one when they participated in unsafe sex.

Analyses included exploration of differences in motivation and behavior between sexual episodes that subjects identified as safer and unsafe. Results of this study were unable to show a difference between metamotivational states in safer and unsafe sexual situations. Motivations for unsafe sex were most often related to the desire for a meaningful, intimate relationship, the need to maintain self esteem and/or the biological immediacy of the moment. Reversal theory will need further refinement before it will be useful in exploring an interactive process as complex as human sexual behavior.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-09, Section: B, page: 4102.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS, 1994.

School code: 0099.