UNSAFE SEX - DECISION-MAKING BIASES AND HEURISTICS

This paper suggests that continued high-risk behavior is the result of the heuristics used to make judgments under uncertainty, and that the same heuristics may be mobilized to increase the use of safer-sex pra ctices. In order to explain why it is that individuals fail to make ef fective use of the information they may have concerning rates of infec tion, consequences of infection and their own at-risk status, theory a nd research in several areas will be considered. Developments in the b readth of areas to which basic research on decision-making has been ap plied continue to provide new approaches toward understanding and over coming the processes by which we reason (Kahnemann, 1991). it is worth reminding ourselves that public health campaigns in other areas have led to changes in behavior. Reasoning, even with its biases, is still the route by which we make decisions, most of them effective and self- protective.