Somatic Marker Hypothesis - Application To Risky Sexual Behavior

Application To Risky Sexual Behavior

Emotional decision-making can greatly affect aspects of people’s daily lives, such as their sex drive. Sensation is connected to the brain and likely stimulates precarious sexual behavior by making the riskier sexual behaviors more exhilarating and pleasurable. The risky sexual behavior evaluated in a study by Wardle and colleagues was continued sexual activity in individuals who are already infected with HIV and are substance dependent. The Somatic Marker Hypothesis proposes that the Iowa Gambling Task may distinguish HIV+ and substance dependent people who have emotional influenced risks, from those who have risks caused by other, unrelated factors. The Somatic Marker Hypothesis was tested in a circumstance when extraneous factors become present, such as a lethal sexually transmitted disease and substance abuse. Wardle and colleagues performed a study utilizing the Iowa Gambling Task in which they drew together 190 HIV+ participants in the Chicago area who all had a history of drug dependency or abuse. Among the factors that were held constant in all participants were: education, race, and brain related items such as no history of neurological disorders or head injury. It was hypothesized that the Iowa Gambling Task would reveal that HIV+ substance dependent people, who are at increased risk for impairment and emotional suffering, are “motivated by negative emotion in their sexual risks”. The results of the study supported the hypothesis that with the better performers on the Iowa Gambling Task there was a clear connection between distress and risk relatedness. The greater the distress, the greater risk these people would take in regards to sexual acts. However, the poor performers on the Iowa Gambling Task did not show a significant link between distress and sexual risk. These findings suggest that people with intact decision-making abilities can attenuate their risk-seeking behavior by decreasing their emotional distress. This conclusion is inconsistent with the Somatic Marker Hypothesis that posits that people with “dysfunctional decision-making circuitry as reflected by poor Iowa Gambling Task performance and emotional distress has little influence on their decision-making capacity”. Instead of concluding that the Iowa Gambling Task is not fully accurate in demonstrating how we have psychologically evolved, it can be determined that sexual risk is a complex neurocognitive process, and emotional variables do not have as much weight in this aspect as in others actions by humans. Additionally, the entirety of human evolutionary psychology evolved without the implications of modern day drugs such as cocaine and other similar substances that have only been presently used and distributed for the past several hundred years. Therefore, it is highly likely that the new initiation of drugs and also diseases (which have always been present through evolution) act as a similar blockade as a lesion to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which affects neural signaling. Though many “Theories about innate human predispositions are extremely difficult to verify” the Somatic Marker Hypothesis has clear evidence leading to its validity as tested in the Iowa Gambling Task.