In my last post, I noted briefly how technology has made it easier than ever to access a variety of pornographic images, whether produced personally or professionally. Much like concerns about how violent video games might make people who play them more violent, there have also been concerns raised about how pornography becoming more prevalent might also lead to certain, undesirable outcomes, such as rape as weakened relationships. As for the video game concern, there is some evidence that the aggression (or rather anger) caused by video games might have a lot less to do with violent content per se than it has to do with losing (full disclosure: I have been unable to locate the paper, so I can’t assess the claims made in it personally, but this explanation should be easily and intuitively understandable to anyone who has seriously engaged in competitive play. Gamers don’t rage quit over violent content; they rage quit because they lost). Similarly, there have been many concerns raised about pornography over the years, many of which hinge on the idea that pornography might lead to people (specifically men) to develop negative attitudes towards women and, accordingly, be more likely to rape them or to accept rape more generally.
Tissue companies vigorously denied that such a link existed
As pornography has become more widely available – thanks in no small part to the internet – rates of rape appear to have declining rather markedly over the same time period; in much the same way, violence has been declining despite violent video games being more common and accessible than ever. The world is a complex place and there are plenty of variables at play, so those correlations are just that. Nevertheless, the evidence that pornography causes any kind of sexual offending is “inconsistent at best” (Ferguson & Hartley, 2009) and, given the nature of the topic, one might reasonably suspect that at least some of that inconsistency has to do with researchers setting out to find certain conclusions. To be blunt about it, some researchers probably “have their answer”, so to speak, before they even begin the research, and might either game their projects to find that result, or interpret otherwise ambiguous results in a manner consistent with their favored hypothesis.
On that note, there was a recent post by Peg Streep concerning the negative effects that pornography might have on intimate relationships. In no uncertain terms, Peg suggests that (1) relationships with porn are less stable, (2) watching porn makes people less committed to their relationships, and (3) that it leads to people cheating on their partners. The certainty with which these points were made appears to stand in marked contrast to the methodological strength of studies she mentions, even from her own summaries of them (As an aside, in the comments section Peg also appears to insinuate that video games make people more violent as well; just a fun coincidence). Given that the studies are covered in less-than-adequate detail, I decided it track down the research she presented for myself and see if there was any good evidence that pornography use has a negative and causal relationship with commitment and intimate relationships.
The first study comes from Maddox et al (2011). This paper surveyed the pornography viewing habits of around 1,300 individuals (whether alone, with a partner, or not at all) and examined whether there was any relationship between viewing pornography and various relationship measures. Those who reported not viewing pornography tended to be more religious, tended to escalate fights less (d = 0.26), thought their relationship was going better (d = 0.22), and were more dedicated to their relationships (d = 0.25, approximately). Further, those who watched porn were less likely to report being satisfied sexually in their relationship (d = 0.21) and also appeared to be two- to three-times as likely to report infidelity. However, the authors explicitly acknowledge on more than one occasion that their data is correlational in nature and provided no evidence of causality. Such research might simply suggest those who like pornography are different than those who do not like it, or that “…individuals who are unhappy with their relationships seek out [pornography] on their own as an outlet for sexual energy”. The pornography itself might have very little to do with relationship strength.
It might have plenty to do with arm strength, though
The second paper Peg mentions at least contains an experiment, which should, in principle, be better for determining if there is any causal relationship here. Unfortunately, there exists a gap between principle and practice here. The paper, by Lambert et al (2012) is rather long, so I’m only going to focus on the actual experiment within it and ignore the other correlational work (as those issues would be largely a retread of the last paper). The experiment involved having current porn users to either (a) refrain from using porn or (b) eating their favorite food for three weeks. The participants (N = 20) also maintained a daily dairy of their porn use. Initially, the two groups reported similar porn usage (M = 3.73 and 4.07 viewings per month – I think – respectively) and relationship commitment (estimated 72% and 62% chance of being with their partner in the future, respectively). After the three week period, those who attempted to abstain from porn reported less viewing (M = 1.42) than those in the food-abstaining group (M = 3.88); the former group also reported greater relationship commitment (63% chance of staying together over time) relative to the food-abstainers (30% chance) at the end of the three weeks.
So was porn the culprit here? Well, I think it’s very doubtful. First of all, the sample size of 10 per group is pitifully small and I would not want to draw any major conclusions from that. Second, both groups were initially high on their relationship commitment despite both groups also watching porn. Third, and perhaps most importantly, what this study found was not an increase in commitment when people watched less porn, directly contradicting what Peg says about the results (that group saw a decrease as well, albeit only a 10% drop); it just found a large decrease in the group that continued to do what it had been doing this whole time. In other words, the authors are positing that a constant (porn usage) was responsible for a dramatic and sudden decline, whereas their manipulation (less porn usage) was responsible for things staying (sort of) constant. I find that very unlikely; more likely, I would say, is that one or two couples within the food-abstaining group happened to have hit a rough patch unrelated to the porn issue and, because the sample size was so small, that’s all it took to find the result.
The final paper Peg mentions comes from Gwinn et al (2013), and examined the relationship between porn and cheating. The authors report two studies: in the first, 74 students either wrote about a sexually explicit scene or an action scene from a movie or show they had seen in the last month; they were then asked to think about what options they had for alternative sexual partners. Those who wrote about the sexual scene rated their options as an average 3.3 out of 7, compared with the 2.6 for the action group (Of note: only half the subjects in the sex group wrote about porn; the other half wrote about non-porn sex scenes). Further, those in the sexual group did not report any difference in their current relationship satisfaction than those in the action group. In the second study, 291 students had their porn habits measured at time one and their cheating behavior (though this was not exclusively sexual behavior) measured at time two. They found a rather weak but positive correlation between the two: pornography use at time one could uniquely account for approximately 1% of the variance in cheating 12 weeks later. So, much like the first study, this one tells us nothing about causation and, even if it did, the effect was small enough to be almost zero.
But go ahead; blame porn. I’m sure you will anyway.
So, to summarize: the first study suggests that people who like porn might be different than those who do not, the second study found that watching less porn did not increase commitment (in direct contradiction to what Peg said about it), and the final study found that porn usage explains almost no unique variance in infidelity on its own, nor does it effect relationship satisfaction. So, when Peg suggests that “The following three studies reveal that it has a greater effect on relationships than those we usually discuss” and, ”Pornography is not as benign as you think, especially when it comes to romantic relationships“, and, “The fantasy alternative leads to real world cheating“, she doesn’t seem to have an empirical leg to stand on. Similarly, in the comments, when she writes “Who blamed cheating on porn? Neither the research nor I. The research indicates the watching porn elevates the odds of cheating for the reasons noted” (emphasis mine), she seems to either not be very careful about her words, or rather disingenuous about what point she seems to be making. I’m not saying there are absolutely no effects to porn, but the research she presents do not make a good case for any of them.
References: Ferguson, C. & Hartley, R. (2009). The pleasure is momentary…the expense damnable? The influence of pornography on rape and sexual assault. Aggression & Violent Behavior, 14, 323-329.
Gwinn, A., Lambert N., Fincham, F., Maner, J. (2013). Pornography, relationship alternatives, and intimate extradyadic behavior. Social Psychology & Personality Science, 4, 699-704.
Lambert, N., Negash, S., Stillman, T., Olmstead, S., & Fincham, F. (2012). A love that doesn’t last: Pornography consumption and weakened commitment to one’s romantic partner. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 31, 410-438.
Maddox, M., Rhoades, G., & Markman, H. (2011). Viewing sexually-explicit materials alone or together: Associations with relationship quality. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 40, 441-448.