Recently, I had the opportunity to evaluate a woman that had been previously evaluated by another forensic psychologist. The prior psychologist accused the woman of having poor judgment. The basis for this assessment was a single episode of risky behavior of a sexual nature. The woman had met a man in a public place and allegedly had had sex with him that same day. The psychologist opines that, because the woman did not know this man at all, going off with him and having sex was sufficiently risky to cast doubt on her judgment in other situations.
The problem with such opinions is that they are uninformed by research that may demonstrate the actual frequency with which such behavior occurs. In fact, such behaviors are a relatively frequent occurrence. At the very least, they are not infrequent enough to infer that one episode of such behavior equals poor judgment overall. In a study of college students to authors developed a survey of sexually risky behaviors. In this survey, almost 1/4 of the students had sex with someone they just met.
Thus, the psychologist should not have made a negative opinion about the woman's judgment. Such behavior is relatively common, even among college students.
See:
Turchik and Garske addressed this subject (Turchik, J. A., & Garske, J. P. (2008). Measurement of Sexual Risk Taking Among College Students. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 38(6), 936-948).
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