Jessica Edwards, Uzma S Rehman, Elizabeth S Nilsen
Existing models of sexual consent communication tend to focus on interpersonal and social contexts. By comparison, the role of individual factors is relatively understudied. In this paper, we advance a new psychological model of sexual consent, the Integrative Cognitive-Affective Model of Sexual Consent Communication, which posits that attachment representations, serving as models for how intimacy is experienced and enacted in adult romantic relationships, are intricately linked to consent communication. Further, the model proposes that attachment insecurity is a risk factor for poor consent communication through two mechanisms: first, a cognitive mechanism based on mentalizing theory, whereby individuals with insecure attachment will have reduced mentalizing capacity during consent communication; second, an affective mechanism, in that individuals with poor emotion regulation skills will be more likely to view consent communication as costly and with fewer benefits. Lastly, our model emphasizes the role of consent motivations, positing that the degree to which an individual perceives communication as more costly will influence the presence and quality of consent communication. A sample of 395 participants completed measures of all key constructs. The results demonstrated that attachment insecurity, mentalizing skills, and emotion regulation predicted sexual consent motivations and behavior, although some pathways were different than hypothesized. Thus, these psychological constructs and mechanisms offer meaningful insight into avoidance of consent communication and additional research is needed to test the pathways posited in the original model and compare with alternate pathways.