A Social Cognitive Perspective on Sexual Interactions

ABSTRACT

Social contexts shape how we perceive the world, make decisions, and interact with those around us. My research takes a multidisciplinary approach to investigate various psychological processes (e.g., developmental, social-cognitive) embedded in social contexts. In my talk, I will begin by briefly presenting earlier work in which I used genetic twin models to examine whether the developmental process of environmental susceptibility remains stable across social contexts, including parents, peers, and schools. Contrary to dominant perspectives, my findings show that susceptibility is highly context-dependent. I will then turn to my current and future research agenda, which integrates theories and methods from social cognition with research on sexual interactions. This work explores how basic social-cognitive processes, such as real-time decision-making and emotion perception, unfold in the complex, dynamic, ambiguous, and socially consequential context of sex compared to other social contexts. I will discuss the theoretical implications of this work for understanding both social cognition and the dynamics of sexual interactions, as well as the applied relevance to pressing issues such as gender dynamics, consent, and decision-making in high-stakes interpersonal interactions, both sexual and nonsexual.