How much you know about promiscuity? Promiscuity refers to unselecting casual sex with multiple sexual partners without engaging in an monogamous relationship with those partners (Markey & Markey, 2007). Promiscuity carries a religion and moral judgement. There are some cultures accept it as norm and immoral. Sexual promiscuity has classified into “ Risky Sexual Behavior” (Hoyle, Fejfar & Miller, 2000; Schmitt & Shackelford, 2008) because promiscuity is a life threatening behaviors consociated with the love addiction and sex. The consequences are often extreme such as pregnancy, abortions, AIDS, STD and so on. Furthermore, those engaging in promiscuous behavior may suffer from the emotional disorder that resulted from maintaining numerous relationships, guilt, shame and worrying about the consequences. For example, a man cannot forgive himself for passing the STD to his loved one and few women can ever let go the guilt that comes from having an abortion. In addition to that, promiscuity also known as the factor of low marriage rate in today’s culture. Promiscuous culture has allowed people to enjoy greater sexual freedom. The freely the people pursue sex, the more difficult they find marriage.
EXPLANATION OF THE THEORY OF PLANNED BEHAVIOR (TPB)
Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1985; Ajzen and Madden, 1986; Schifter and Ajzen, 1985) is the study of relationship between attitudes and behavior. It shows that behavior is the direct result of a behavioral intention. TPB positions that individual behavior is triggered by behavioral intentions. TPB is divided into three different components, there are attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. Attitude is the positive and negative feeling of an individual when performing a particular behavior . It is determined through an assessment of the consequences of one’s belief. While the subjective norm is an individual’s perception. The perception is based on the thinking of the people who important to the person. As a result, the motivation of the person is according to the contribution of the opinion of other people. They will follow the perception and perform the behavior as the people think about. Perceived behavioral control refers to the perceptions of the individual and their ability to perform the behavior. A particular behavior was performed based on a consideration of internal and external factors, both relating to past behavior.
APPLICATION OF THE THEORY OF PLANNED BEHAVIOR (TPB)
TPB can be used for behavioral modification. The use of TPB contribute to behavioral intention and engage in behavioral change. However, why some individuals are not able to engage in behavioral change? A promiscuous person perceived sex as one of the most basic physiological needs. The attitudes of them towards their behavior are they really enjoy sex very much with different sexual partners. For them, sexual satisfaction is outweight from many other things. While from the aspect of subjective norms, they believe that promiscuity is not a crime. They will not get caught by having this kind of sexual behavior. Furthermore, they have a lot of friend also behaved like them. Hence, they ended up with promiscuous behavior. They believe that it will not cause any harm to themselves and their partners as they are capable to continue promiscuous behavior if they practiced safe sex to avoid from the AIDS. As a result, they continue to have sex with many sexual partners. In conclusion, we can conclude that they do not have positive attitudes about the sexual behavior, they do not know what is wrong or right while they are doing in such a way. In addition to that, they do not have positive subjective norms. They lack of positive encouragement from society, family and friend. Hence, they do not have motivation to change the behavior. Besides that, due to the poorly perceived behavioral control, they think that they are never able to fully control themselves, for example, “ I’ve tried, but it doesn’t work, I’ll never succeed.”
TWO HIGH RISK GROUPS WITH HIGH RISK FACTORS
Miserable parental attachment during childhood resulted in promiscuity behavior(McLeish, Paetzold & Rholes, 2010). The kind of relationship one has is affected by the relationship with their parental figure during childhood. A person who experienced insufficient relationship with their parents during childhood is less likelihood to experience secure attachment during adulthood. As a result, they are likely to experience insecurity, anxiety and even lack of self-esteem. People with this poor attachment style are generally insisted to reject long-term relationships with a certain individual . They look for short-term relationship in order to compensate the lost of insecurity. The other high risk groups are people who are very friendly or socially dominant or either antagonistic tend to be more sexually promiscuous. They believed that having a dominant personality is easier to approach potential partners. Furthermore, it is interesting that warm people tend to be promiscuous. In fact, someone doing it as an expression of their warmth to other people. In addition to that, a warm individuals have sexual relations with multiple individuals because they consider sexual encounter as a positive act to show their kindness or love. On the other end of spectrum, due to the fear of mistreatment and rejection, cold and antagonistic individuals might prefer to have multiple partners in order to avoid being in a monogamous sexual relationships. They are motivated to engage in short-term mating as the individual can satisfy the sexual desire and continue to maintain their interpersonal distance with their partner.(Markey& Markey, 2007).
CONCLUSION- PREVENTIONS
It is a known fact that promiscuous individuals are one of the high risk group of AIDS. AIDS is a life-threatening health problem. There is no ‘ miracle pill ‘, or injection to cure. There is a saying that goes: “ Prevention is better than cure”. One might know the major causes of AIDS, but not know how to prevent it, especially for a promiscuous individual. They can have sexual intercourse at anytime and anywhere to satisfy their sexual addict. Most of them did not care about the consequences. Education is the most effective way. The safety precautions for safe sex should spread to the society, especially for the promiscuous group through different program, such as campaign, pamphlet, health booth and so on. It increases the awareness of them towards promiscuity that leads to AIDS. Educate people on the importance of safe sex. Always use a condom when having sexual intercourse to protect themselves or others against sexual transmitted disease. Some of the individuals behave promiscuous due to the psychology problems, such as they do not experienced sufficient relationship with their parental figure during childhood (McLeish et al, 2010). Hence, the healthcare practitioners can cooperate with the psychologist to provide counseling to the promiscuous individuals. The helpline and resources should be easy access to everyone. They can organize their health booth at crowded places in order to promote their activities to public. They provide encouragement and methods of how to get rid of the promiscuity. As a result, for those who feel detest towards their behavior can know where they can encounter with to lead them to a “ health addictions”.
In conclusion, the promiscuity group realizes the consequences of the promiscuity, so they should change their mind set and behavior in the effort to proceed to a healthy lifestyle.
