Science has some good news for any pornhounds that may be out there. Porn may be good for you.
Its long been though that porn is associated with a range of negative social attitudes; including promoting sexual violence and negative attitudes towards women. Turns out that, at least in the case of these two issues, this doesn't appear to be the case.
In a finding sure to piss off some feminists:
Now let’s look at attitudes towards women. Studies of men who had seen X-rated movies found that they were significantly more tolerant and accepting of women than those men who didn’t see those movies, and studies by other investigators—female as well as male—essentially found similarly that there was no detectable relationship between the amount of exposure to pornography and any measure of misogynist attitudes.So apparently watching porn makes men less mysogynist, not more. It may even promote attitudes conducive to making for a long-lasting relationship.
Not only that, but viewing porn may actually act to prevent sex crimes. Quoting the article:
Over the years, many scientists have investigated the link between pornography (considered legal under the First Amendment in the United States unless judged “obscene”) and sex crimes and attitudes towards women. And in every region investigated, researchers have found that as pornography has increased in availability, sex crimes have either decreased or not increased.So men, grab your...mice.
For a more technical review of the literature, click here.
Diamond, M. (2009). Pornography, public acceptance and sex related crime: A review International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 32 (5), 304-314 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijlp.2009.06.004
Posts
6 comments:
My name is Optimus Primate, and I approve this message.
I think it depends on what kind of "atmosphere" is promoted by the piece of work - whether just sexy, or exalts violence and domination, etc.
Hmm, I'd be cautious with a correlational study. And I also seem to remember some result where looking at porn in which women enjoyed being assualted made mpeople more tolerant of sexual violence.
I read the extended article and it makes sense. It reminded me of another recent finding, correlating sexual crimes with religiousness. Suppressing violent tendencies is not good. If sports, violent movies and porn allow most people to let off steam, then they are definitely worth the risk of making a few people more tolerant of the portrayed behavior (being more tolerant does not mean you will do it yourself).
To take it a step further, I was wondering if these findings could help in the fight against child pornography and sex crimes against children. What if computer-generated child pornography were widely available? If it were proven that it would help prevent the malestation of even a few children, it would be something I would gladly endorse.
Children suffer at the hands of the monsters that create and distribute child pornography and children also suffer because the suppressed sickos can not defuse their perverse passions. Could this be the solution?
Porn may be linked to repetitive strain injury of the wrist, however.
Neil B wrote: I think it depends on what kind of "atmosphere" is promoted by the piece of work
As far as I can tell (without reading all of the references in the paper), most of the studies looked at run-of-the-mill stuff, not S&M and the like. That said, a brief search of google scholar finds no evidence that the more "extreme" stuff has the opposite effect.
That said, in the first article I linked to, they do mention that countries which legalize child pornography see a parallel decreases in sex crimes against children, suggesting that it may work in the cases of the real perverted stuff.
Livia said: I'd be cautious with a correlational study
As always - while causation always equal correlation, the opposite is not always true. The violence part especially falls into this category - the decreases in sexual violence could just as much be due to liberalisation of society, or some other sociological changes over the 30-year period the stats were run on.
But in the case of attitudes towards women, some of those studies were non-correlative; and instead assayed opinions before/after porn, or assayed using case-controlled studies. In those cases we're not looking at correlations, making the conclusions much stronger.
Xristoforos said:Suppressing violent tendencies is not good
I agree. It would appear that porn (sports, etc) provide an outlet for our less-than-desirable instincts.
I was wondering if these findings could help in the fight against child pornography and sex crimes against children
As the Scientist article mentioned, in countries where child porn is legalised they do see drops in sex crimes against children. I couldn't figure out a way that you could "legally" make child porn, but your computer idea is a possibility. Although I'd hope we could find a better way of dealing with that particular issue.
Post a Comment