Alberta Innovates- Health Solutions

Posed night after night in countless darkened bars and smoke-filled taverns, this provocative question often carries with it the hope of more intimate contact than an acknowledging smile.

It's the libidinous behaviour that may follow these proffered libations that intrigues Heritage researcher Dr. Tara MacDonald. But the new AHFMR Population Health Investigator isn't a voyeur, it should be quickly explained. As a social psychologist at the University of Lethbridge, Dr. MacDonald is currently studying attitudes and decision-making in "intoxicating" situations that may, "increase the understanding of why people, when drunk, make decisions that might damage their own and/or someone else's health." Better understanding these cognitive processes could lead to more effective safe-sex campaigns to help combat the spread of life-threatening sexually transmitted diseases.

Dr. MacDonald's research, which is partially conducted in Calgary bars, is focussed on the social actions of women and men 18 years old and over. "Many of them are away from home for the first time, and they are experimenting with alcohol and experimenting with sex, and the two behaviours often tend to coincide." She cites one American study that reports 50% of young people were drunk the first time they had sex. Numerous other studies have found that as many as 85% of high school and college students don't use a condom every time they have sex.

It's commonly thought that alcohol consumption lessens people's inhibitions. Many people drink "to loosen up". Dr. MacDonald is testing a competing theory related to this idea, called "alcohol myopia," developed by American researchers Claude Steele and Robert Josephs. It suggests that drinking alcohol reduces the amount of information that a person can process at a given time. A drunk person intent on romance may be able to focus only on pleasure and not on the consequences of engaging in unsafe sex (pregnancy and STDs), Dr. MacDonald explains.

She hopes to extend the theory even further. She proposes that alcohol also makes intoxicated people more susceptible to prominent cues in their environment. "My hypothesis is that when impelling cues are present, drunk people are more likely to say that they would go ahead and have sex without a condom than sober people; but importantly, in the inhibiting condition where we load them up with safe-sex cues, drunk people should actually be less likely to say they would go ahead and have sex without a condom than sober people."

In her experiments, selected patrons are marked with hand stamps carrying a safe sex message at the beginning of their evening. Participants are then separated into two groups: people who are sober and those who are intoxicated. Group members are then asked about their intentions to engage in unprotected sex.

Dr. MacDonald thinks positive images will work better than negative images when it comes to promoting safe sex. "I think that the safe-sex stamp will be more effective than a scary kind of 'AIDS kills' stamp. The 'AIDS kills' stamp might be such a threatening message to them that people won't process it," she explains.

The information Dr. MacDonald is now gathering could prove important theoretically because it would show another way in which alcohol affects logic and, ultimately, behaviour, she says. In practical terms, her results could be used in awareness programs aimed at reducing potentially harmful behaviours, such as having sex without a condom or drinking and driving. It's Dr. MacDonald's guess that simple and inexpensive measures like signs displayed in bars or slogans printed on T-shirts worn by bar staff could positively affect the decisions of drunk patrons.

Dr. Tara MacDonald is an AHFMR Population Health Investigator at the University of Lethbridge. She receives support for her work through the Health Research Fund, administered by the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research on behalf of Alberta Health. She receives additional funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC), as well as the University of Lethbridge Research Fund.