Division of Public Health, Amsterdam Municipal Health Service, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
J Health Psychol. 2000 Jul;5(4):487-99. doi: 10.1177/135910530000500407.
Lower socioeconomic status (SES) has been associated with higher rates of HIV infection as well as higher rates of unsafe sex. The behavioral determinants that might mediate the effect of SES on risky sex have not been studied thus far. We investigated the involvement of social cognitions in the link between educational status and unprotected anal sex in 292 participants of the Amsterdam Young Gay Men Study. We found that poorly educated men had poorer knowledge about HIV and preventive behavior, perceived social norms to be less favorable towards condom usage with casual partners, and had lower perceived control over that behavior than the better educated men. Poorly educated men were also more likely to have engaged in unprotected anal sex with casual partners in the six-month period that followed the assessment of the social cognitions. However, the education-related behavioral difference could not be explained by social cognitions. We concluded that cognitive models of behavior might not explain all of the risk behavior in gay men with lower SES. These men's risk-taking behavior might result from specific psychological characteristics of men with lower SES that interfere with traditional cognition-behavior correlations as posited in prevailing models of behavior.
社会经济地位（SES）较低与 HIV 感染率较高以及安全性行为率较高有关。迄今为止，尚未研究SES 对性行为风险的影响的行为决定因素。我们调查了社会认知在 292 名阿姆斯特丹年轻男同性恋者研究参与者的教育程度与无保护肛交之间的联系中的作用。我们发现，受教育程度较低的男性对 HIV 和预防行为的了解较差，对与偶然伴侣使用安全套的社会规范的看法不太有利，并且对这种行为的控制感低于受教育程度较高的男性。受教育程度较低的男性在评估社会认知后的六个月内也更有可能与偶然伴侣发生无保护的肛交行为。然而，与教育相关的行为差异不能用社会认知来解释。我们的结论是，行为的认知模型可能无法解释 SES 较低的男同性恋者的所有风险行为。这些男性的冒险行为可能是由于 SES 较低的男性的特定心理特征造成的，这些特征干扰了流行的行为模型中提出的传统认知-行为相关性。
