INTRINSIC FACTORS

friends who have tons of girlfriends and they do stuff with their girlfriends, but I know that this is as far as I am prepared to go and nothing else. It is like you don't take any risk or anything. Not because of AIDS but because of yourself as a person. It is like I wouldn't sleep with my girlfriend, not just because I don't want to, but just because of the person that you are. JJ

This statement suggests that the participant feels less threatened by contracting HIV because of intrinsic elements of himself. It seems that in knowing one's boundaries that serve as a function of the person you understand yourself to be, this offers a sense of safety and protection against contracting the virus. Again one can see the internal locus of control that gives this participant a lower perceived vulnerability towards contracting the virus.

Participant 3 also suggested a direct link between personality and the effect this would have on choices made in sexual behaviour:

Participant 3: " ... there are certain personalities more who would lend themselves to being more overly precautious ... "

Here the participants are defining the possible differences in appraisal of risk based on

differences in the personality and character of individuals. Participant 1 explicitly stated what type of characteristics she felt would predispose someone to being more vulnerable to contracting HIV:

Participant 1: "Maybe the more impulsive ... the more driven kind of .. instant

gratification ... you know ... party hard now and think about it, deal with it tomorrow kind of attitude ... and also sort of people with like .. .1 don't know, f mean it's sort of come up a lot ... is the arrogance. Sort of the very prideful you know, 'this is not going to affect me, it's just a big ploy, it's

not really out there '. Sort of that whole urn ... you know that sort of almost narcissistic personality that is out there as well. Ya, f think that they would be more vulnerable as well. "

These characteristics were attributed to someone who would be more at risk. Interestingly, participant 3 also agreed that a major determinant of choices made in risk behaviour was intrinsic factors, namely that personality overrides one's cultural, religious or social background that may inform certain choices made in one's sexual behaviour:

Participant 3: "Urn ... like ffeel in some cases it is a personality thing. Like you either are going to conform in terms of that religion and culture or you are going to like, you know, break the rules. So ffee/like it is much more of a personality thing because of the people f have known that have not conformed, it was more a personality thing than in culture because f have known the family, I've known like, the influence and all of those have

been the same as mine but it is just the person themselves who's not conformed to that cultural norms or set up or religion ... "

The employing of this strategy may be an attempt to distance one's own perceived vulnerability in contracting the virus onto a group of people with which one does not identify with, namely people depicted with the above mentioned risky personality traits. Social identity theory (Tesser,

1995) explains that people favour in-groups (the group to which the individual belongs) over out- groups (any group other than then the in-group) in order to maintain or enhance their self-esteem.

Out-group homogeneity also occurs when the in-group members generalise the members of the out-group as being more similar to each other than are the members of the in-group. Intrinsic factors of health science students such.as being achievement orientated, highly educated, and health orientated do not seem to correlate with the qualities ascril:ed to people who they perceive as having an increased vulnerability towards HIV, namely, immediate gratification and

denialism.

Participant 4 also reiterated his ideas around personality and character playing a role in one's perceived vulnerability towards contracting HIV. This participant was more specific in that he spoke directly about his understanding of extrovert and introvert personality types and the role they play in yielding people as more or less vulnerable to contracting the virus:

Participant 4: "Urn ...

if

you a very, urn an extrovert urn, but

if

you are open minded and that is your character, then you will perceive things in an open minded way, but

if

you are not,

if

you are a very quiet person,

if

you are very narrow minded or orthodox person then, very old fashioned in a way.

Well, I would think that the open mind would lead to ok, awareness, saying that [HIV] is out there, it can happen to me, this is what, how it can be transmitted ... ya, you would understand all of that and you would accept it and like you wouldn't like shy away from it because you are accepting it. And then maybe the introverted and maybe the old school person will think, oh she has got AIDS and she must be a very bad person

and you know, things like that ... "

The participant seems to understand extroverted personality types as being more consciously critical about risk taking behaviour and the reality ofHIV transmission whereas the participant's understanding of introverted seems to be steeped in a conservative, non-critically engaging thought processes around HIV transmission.

According to literature, these two personality traits have been viewed differentlyin relation to how this participant has conceptualised them. More specifically, Schmidt (2002) documented results of a study that was conducted with the intention of ascertaining the possible link between the personality trait of extroversion and the engagement in risky sexual behaviour. After

analysing samples from 58 cultures within 52 countries, Schmitt concluded that this theoretical link may be true for people from South America, Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Oceania. But, in African and East Asian countries, extraversion was unrelated to sexually promiscuous behaviour. The idea of personality type playing a relational role in promiscuous behaviour was thus not proven to have a direct link to risky sexual behaviour in South Africa.

However, what is pertinent to this study is the already mentioned sample of health science students' perceptions around the possible links between these two variables and how it may inform their own perceived vulnerability towards contracting the virus.