Understanding Acute Alcohol Effects on Sexual Behavior

Abstract

Alcohol has been implicated as having a causal role in a variety of sexual processes and outcomes. We review nonexperimental research illustrating the nature of alcohol's association with sexuality. Methodological considerations limiting causal assertions permissible with nonexperimental data are discussed. We also review findings from experiments, mostly analogue paradigms, examining the effects of alcohol on genital arousal, sexual risk taking, and sexual assault. In each case, it is observed that alcohol can exert a causal effect on one or more of the constituent responses undergirding these phenomena. We conclude that alcohol does appear to have a causal impact on many sexuality indices studied in laboratory conditions. Both alcohol expectancy and alcohol myopia models have been applied to explain these causal linkages. Expectancy models seem to account well for postdrinking sexual reactions and perceptions. Overall, myopia analyses seem to offer the most persuasive explanations of postdrinking expressions of sexual risk taking and sexual assault.