Romantic representations and sexual behavior in adolescence

1

Romantic representations and sexual behavior in
adolescence Meredith C. Jones Wyndol Furman

• Methods (Continued)
• Sexual behavior
• Sexual Attitudes and Behavior Survey (Furman
  Wehner, 1992) Scale of Sexual Risk Taking
  (Metzler, Noell, Biglan, 1992)
• 8 sexual behavior measures frequency of genital
  and non-genital sexual behavior, how quickly
  adolescents engage in each behavior (rapidity),
  age of onset, number of casual and total partners
  in the past year, and risky sexual behavior.
• Exploratory factor analyses suggested 2 factors
  for both rapidity and frequency
• Non-genital cuddling, kissing, necking, light
  petting, heavy petting, dry sex.
• Genital oral, anal and vaginal sex.
• Analyses
• Separate multiple regression analyses examined
  the influence of each working model and
  relational style on each measure of sexual
  behavior, controlling for ethnicity and gender.
• Results
• More avoidant styles were related to less
  frequent genital sexual behavior.
• Both avoidant styles and working models were
  related to less frequent non-genital sexual
  behavior.
• More anxious working models were related to
  faster rapidity of genital sexual behavior.
• Both anxious working models and anxious
  relational styles were both related to more
  casual and total sexual partners in the past year
  and increased risky sexual behavior.

• Methods (Continued)
• Measures
• Representations of attachment in romantic
  relationships
• Working models of attachment
• Semi-structured Romantic Interview (RI Furman,
  2001) assessed secure, anxious, and avoidant
  working models.
• Relational styles
• The Behavioral Systems Questionnaire for Romantic
  Partners (BSQ Furman Wehner, 1994) assessed
  secure, anxious, and avoidant relational styles
  in romantic relationships.

• Introduction
• The relationship between attachment
  representations of romantic partners and sexual
  behavior has been established in adulthood (e.g.,
  Brennan Shaver, 1995) but not in adolescence.
  Romantic representations may play an important
  role in determining adolescents sexual behavior,
  and vice versa.
• Adults with anxious attachment styles have sex at
  an earlier age and have more lifetime partners
  (Bogaert Sadava, 2002), and avoidant adults
  often engage in risky sexual behaviors like
  one-night stands (Simpson Gangestad, 1991).
• Findings from a single study with adolescents
  (Tracy et al., 2003) are inconsistent with those
  with adults (e.g., Cooper, Shaver Collins,
  1998). Avoidant adolescents have the least
  romantic relationship and sexual experience,
  whereas anxious adolescent females and secure
  adolescent males have the most (Tracy at al.,
  2003).
• Teens with more avoidant views may shy away from
  behaviors which increase intimacy with others,
  whereas teens with more anxious views may use
  sexual behavior in attempts to increase intimacy
  with partners (Cooper et al., 1998).
• Current Study
• Purpose To provide a more comprehensive
  examination of the links between attachment
  representations (i.e., working models and styles)
  and sexual behavior in adolescence using data
  from an ongoing multi-method longitudinal study
  of adolescents close relationships and
  adjustment.
• Prior work has relied on self-report
  questionnaire measures of attachment styles,
  whereas the present study examined working models
  (as assessed by interviews) and self-reported
  attachment styles.
• Instead of solely assessing vaginal intercourse,
  we included questions about a variety of
  non-genital, genital, and risky sexual behaviors.
• Hypotheses
• More avoidant attachment views will be related to
  low frequency and rapidity of sexual behaviors
  and few sexual partners.
• More anxious views will be related to early age
  of onset of sexual activity, high frequency and
  rapidity sexual behaviors, many partners, and
  high risky sexual behavior.

Table 1 Sexual behavior regressed on avoidant
representations
Table 2 Sexual behavior regressed on anxious
representations

Tables 1-2 ßs for associations between romantic
representations and sexual behavior (p lt .05,
plt .01)
Please address questions, comments, or reprint
requests to meredithcjones_at_gmail.com or Meredith
Jones, Department of Psychology, University of
Denver, 2155 S. Race Street, Denver, CO 80210.