Overcoming Truth Telling as an Obstacle to Initiating Safer Sex: Clients and Health Practitioners Planning Deception During HIV Test Counseling

This article considers how deception, as a strategy for handling delicate interpersonal situations, is raised and responded to during HIV pretest counseling sessions. Two cases are presented in which clients (CLs) formulate extrarelational sexual encoun-ters as potential obstacles to initiating safer sex practices with long-term relational partners (because reinitiating safer sex with such partners would entail admission of the extrarelational encounters). Close analysis of spoken interaction reveals that CLs display their resistance to initiating safer sex by animating, through hypothetical dia-logue, their long-term partners ’ requests for explanation of the disruption in their usual intimate behaviors; health practitioners attempt to overcome this obstacle of “truth telling ” by suggesting deception in its place. This study extends current under-standings of the formulation and planning of deceptive messages in the course of ac-tual health promotion interactions. The implications of this investigation suggest that deception may pose a viable, albeit controversial, option when promoting disease pre-vention behaviors, especially in delicate interpersonal interactions such as not want-ing to admit an extrarelational affair. The counseling that accompanies HIV testing can be an important factor in influ-encing people to practice safer sex to avoid AIDS (Beardsell & Coyle, 1996). This article examines HIV test counseling encounters in which health practitioners (HPs) present deception as a compliance-gaining strategy for clients (CLs) to use i