Self-reported impulsivity has been found to predict the
perpetration of sexual coercion in both sexual offenders and male
college students. Impulsivity can be conceptualized as a gen-
eralized lack of self-control (i.e., general perspective) or as a multi-
faceted construct that can vary from one context to the other (i.e.,
domain-specific perspective). Delay discounting, the tendency to
prefer sooner smaller rewards over larger delayed rewards, is a
measure of impulsive decision making. Recent sexual adapta-
tions of delay discounting tasks can be used to test domain-speci-
fic assumptions. The present study used the UPPS-P impulsivity
questionnaire, a standard money discounting task, and a sexual
discounting task to predict past use of sexual coercion in a sample
of 98 male college students. Results indicated that higher negative
urgency scores, less impulsive money discounting, and more impul-
sive sexual discounting all predicted sexual coercion. Consistent
with previous studies, sexuality was discounted more steeply than
money by both perpetrators and non-perpetrators of sexual coer-
cion, but this difference was twice as large in perpetrators com-
pared to non-perpetrators. Our study identified three different pre-
dictors of sexual coercion in male college students: a broad ten-
dency to act rashly under negative emotions, a specific difficulty
to postpone sexual gratification, and a pattern of optimal non-sex-
ual decision making. Results highlight the importance of using
multiple measures, including sexuality-specific measures, to get a clear portrait of the links between impulsivity and sexual coer-
cion.

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• What Money Can’t Buy: Different Patterns in Decision Making About Sex and Money Predict Past Sexual Coercion Perpetration