When the End (Automatically) Justifies the Means: Automatic Tendency Toward Sex Exchange for Crack Cocaine

• Published in: Motivation science Vol. 1; no. 4; p. 233
• Main Authors: Kopetz, Catalina E, Collado, Anahi, Lejuez, Carl W
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 01.12.2015
• Subjects: means; drug use; risky sexual behavior; self-defeating behavior; goals
• ISSN: 2333-8113
• DOI: 10.1037/mot0000025

The current research explores the idea that self-defeating behaviors represent means toward individuals' goals. In this quality, they may be automatically initiated upon goal activation without individual's voluntary intention and thus exemplify the long-held idea that the end justifies the means. To investigate this notion empirically we explored one of the most problematic self-defeating behavior: engagement in sex exchange for crack cocaine. This behavior is common among female drug users despite its well-known health and legal consequences. Although these women know and understand the consequences of such behavior, they have a hard time resisting it when the goal of drug obtainment becomes accessible. Indeed, the current study shows that when the accessibility of such a goal is experimentally increased, participants for whom sex exchange represents an instrumental means to drug obtainment are faster to approach sex-exchange targets in a joystick task despite their self-reported intentions to avoid such behavior.