Sexual violence against women is highly prevalent on college campuses. Survivors of sexual violence often engage in coping strategies such as risky sexual behavior. The present study used a behavioral task to measure sexual risk-taking following experiences of positive or negative affect and an emotion suppression experimental manipulation. Sexually active adult female undergraduates (N = 175) completed measures of sexual traumatization and affective experiences as well as an autobiographical recall task and a delay discounting task for hypothetical sexual outcomes. Half of the participants (n = 87) were asked to suppress their emotional response to the autobiographical recall task. The findings indicate that sexual traumatization had a significant effect on risky sexual decision-making, F(1, 167) = 23.27, p < .001, ηp 2 = .12, but affective condition, F(1, 167) = .57, p = .451, and emotion suppression, F(1, 167) = .69, p = .412, exhibited no significant associations with sexual risk-taking. These findings suggest other factors may underlie the association between sexual trauma and risky sexual behavior, but further research is warranted.
© 2022 International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.