Article- "Does Drinking Promote Risky Sexual Behavior?"
In order to get full credit for reading each REP article, keep in mind you will need to complete an essay quiz in which you write (1) a brief summary of the article and (2) a paragraph describing how the article applies to the material you are learning in Psych 1100. The following guiding questions will help keep you focused on the most important aspects of the article.
Focus on these questions as you prepare your summary and application essays. You do not have to answer all of these questions in your essays, but, if you are able to answer all of them after reading the article, you should understand the key points well enough to write a clear summary and application essay. There are many ways to answer these quizzes correctly, but these questions provide a good starting point to organize your thinking.
As you read the Cooper article and write your summary consider:
• What is the main point of the article? (Tip: The abstract of any article typically offers a concise overview of the article's main point).
• What are the three possible interpretations that Cooper gives for the correlation between drinking and risky sexual behavior? Explain each of these interpretations in one or two sentences.
• In Cooper's review of naturalistic studies of drinking and risky sex, she describes a difference between men and women in terms of the relationship between drinking and having sex on the first date. Briefly explain this difference and what it reveals about the complex relationship between drinking and risky sexual behavior.
• Cooper mentions several ways that a person's beliefs about the effect of alcohol (i.e. a person's alcohol expectancies) impact his/her behavior when s/he drinks (and even when the person thinks s/he is consuming alcohol but actually is not). Summarize this research.
• Explain what further research is necessary, according to Cooper.
As you read the Cooper article and write your application consider:
• How does this article attempt to distinguish between correlation and causation? Consider some of the potential interpretations of the relationship between alcohol and risky sexual behavior that are covered in Chapter 2: The Measure of Mind: Methods of Psychology.
• Cooper describes findings from studies using several types of research design. Identify a few of these studies and explain which research designs are being used.
• What other aspects of this article remind you of topics addressed (or to be addressed) in class? (Tip: you may want to read Chapter 6: The Aware Mind: Elements of Consciousness and Chapter 7: The Feeling Mind: Motivation and Emotion.)
References to chapter number above are specific to the OSU custom edition of the Cacioppa & Freberg 2e (2015)textbook and may not correspond to the textbook used in the Honors sections of Psychology 1100.