Now, imagine a different thousand people. These people will drive from Detroit to Chicago tomorrow—about 300 miles. How many will die on the trip as a result of a car crash?
Which of those two numbers is bigger?
If you’re anything like the participants in a new study led by Terri D. Conley of the University of Michigan, the HIV estimate should be bigger—a lot bigger. In fact, the average guess for the HIV case was a little over 71 people per thousand, while the average guess for the car-crash scenario was about 4 people per thousand.
In other words, participants thought that you are roughly 17 times more likely to die from HIV contracted from a single unprotected sexual encounter than you are to die from a car crash on a 300-mile trip.
But here’s the deal: Those estimates aren’t just wrong, they’re completely backward.
According to statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, you are actually 20 times more likely to die from the car trip than from HIV contracted during an act of unprotected sex.
Why were the participants’ estimates so far off?
Conley and her colleagues think the answer has to do with stigma: Risky behavior related to sex is judged more harshly than comparable (or even objectively worse) health risks, when you control for the relevant differences between the behaviors.
“It seems that as a culture we have decided that sex is something dangerous and to be feared,” Conley told me in an interview. That’s why, she argues, U.S. parents try to “micromanage” their children’s sexuality, “with the danger of STIs [Sexually Transmitted Infections] being a large part of that.”
At the same time, “parents are excited about kids getting their driver's licenses, and do not regularly forbid their child from driving … they know there are risks but assume the kids must learn to manage those risks.”
She thinks this approach should be applied to sex as well.
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