Abstract

The sexual health of teenagers has become a major research topic, arising from the necessity to design intervention programmes to enhance HIV preventative behaviours and reduce unwanted pregnancies. Traditional social-cognitive models (e.g. the theory of planned behaviour, (Ajzen, 1991) have been shown to predict a vast range of human behaviours. However, although widely applied, social-cognitive models have been only moderately successful predicting condom use (Sheeran & Taylor, 1999) and intervention studies based on such theories have not moderated sexual behaviours in young people (Wight et al., 2002). One reason for the limitations of such models might be because the arousal context that inherently characterizes sexual encounters has been ignored.