Thinking about sexual behavior: Action identification and sex education

Action identification theory asserts that people undertake action with a particular identity for what they are doing, and that this identity is resistant to change. Emergence of a new understanding of action occurs when the person thinks about some detail of the action and is then exposed to a new higher level identity for the act. To test the emergence hypothesis with respect to sexual behavior, subjects were asked to think about having sex and list either the high level aspects (i.e., consequences and implications of having sex) or lower level aspects (i.e., details of having sex). Subjects then read an article identifying sex as responsible behavior or physical pleasure. As predicted, subjects induced to think about the act of having sex in terms of its details expressed their cognitive representation of the act in a way which conformed with the target emergent identity (pleasure or responsibility) to which they were exposed.