People differ in their predispositions to value safety maintenance (i.e., disease prevention regulatory focus) or pleasure pursuit (i.e., pleasure promotion regulatory focus). Extending recent research, we explored whether these individual differences result in a trade-off between potential health risks and pleasure rewards in sexual practices and experiences with casual partners. Results of a cross-sectional study with participants living in Portugal and Spain (N = 770) showed that people who were more focused on prevention reported more restricted sexual activities and experienced less positive (and more negative) sexual outcomes. In contrast, people who were more focused on promotion reported more unrestricted sexual activities and experienced more positive (and less negative) sexual outcomes. This pattern of results remained the same after controlling for country differences, indicating the robustness of our findings across different cultural contexts. Our findings show the complexity of sexual decisions and align with our reasoning that prevention-focused people tend to value health safety over sexual pleasure, whereas promotion-focused people tend to value sexual pleasure over health safety. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.

--