The Reflective-Impulsive Model
To understand how contextual influences have an effect on condom use, a dynamic model of condomless sex is needed. Dual-process models seem to be especially suited to do so. An application of these models is the Reflective Impulsive Model (RIM: Strack & Deutsch, The reflective system, on the other hand, relies on logic and rule-based reasoning for processing information. It requires mental effort and can only operate when sufficient cognitive resources are available. It generates explicit judgments, attitudes, and decisions that, put together, form action plans in new situations (Lieberman et al., The negative effects of alcohol on working memory and executive functioning have been extensively documented. Alcohol negatively affects executive functioning in general, including cognitive processes such as selective attention, task switching, and working memory (Baddeley et al., While several studies have been published on the effect of alcohol on working memory capacity, there are no studies that directly investigated the effect of sexual arousal on working memory capacity. However, indirect support for such effect has been found. van Lankveld and Smulders (In this study, we explored whether the Reflective-Impulsive Model can explain the negative effect of alcohol and sexual arousal on intentions to use a condom. We investigated a sample of male students, because we expected stronger effects in men, as compared with women (Scott-Sheldon et al., 