Preliminary Insights from a U.S. Probability Sample on Adolescents' Pornography Exposure, Media Psychology, and Sexual Aggression

Sexual aggression is now widely recognized as a public health crisis. Using the sexual script acquisition, activation, application model (₃AM) as a guide, this paper reports findings on U.S. teenagers' exposure to pornography, motivation for viewing pornography, perceptions of pornography's realism, identification with pornographic actors, and sexual aggression risk from the National Survey of Porn Use, Relationships, and Sexual Socialization (NSPRSS), a U.S. population-based probability study. Sexual aggression was operationalized as pressuring another person into having sex despite their explicit declaration of nonconsent. Having been exposed to pornography and perceiving pornography as realistic were associated with increased sexual aggression risk. A stronger level of identification with pornographic actors was associated with an increased probability of sexual aggression for males, but not females. A motivation to learn about others' sexual expectations from pornography was unrelated to sexual aggression. Results interpretation and discussion focus on the need for additional theoretical nuance and measurement specificity in the media psychology literature on pornography and sexual aggression.

Sexual Consent Communication in Best-Selling Pornography Films: A Content Analysis

Even though young people report learning about sex from pornography, most do not think this sexual medium teaches them about sexual consent communication. But research shows that people are also able to evaluate pornography as consensual or not. Therefore, we proposed that pornography depicts subtle sexual scripts regarding sexual consent communication. We conducted a content analysis of 50 20-minute segments within best-selling pornographic films from 2015. We systematically coded the presence of various consent communication cues in these films. Consent communication was often depicted; nonverbal cues were more frequent than verbal cues. We found that the films either directly or indirectly supported several sexual scripts: Explicit Verbal Consent Isn't Natural, Women are Indirect/Men are Direct, Sex Can Happen Without Ongoing Communication, Lower-Order Behaviors Don't Need Explicit Consent, and People Receiving Sexual Behaviors Can Consent by Doing Nothing. Further research is needed to examine whether viewers are acquiring, activating, or applying these scripts. Sex education programs could benefit from acknowledging how consent communication is modeled in pornography and by teaching about pornography literacy.

German Heterosexual Women’s Pornography Consumption and Sexual Behavior

This study found that German heterosexual women’s personal and partnered consumption of pornography were positively correlated with their desire to engage in or having previously engaged in submissive (but not dominant) sexual behaviors such as having their hair pulled, having their face ejaculated on, being spanked, choked, called names, slapped, and gagged. The association between women’s partnered pornography consumption and submissive sexual behavior was strongest for women whose first exposure to pornography was at a young age. The findings also indicated that women’s personal and partnered pornography consumption were uniquely related to their engagement in submissive sexual behavior.

Public Health Significance Statement:

This study suggests that greater exposure to pornography among heterosexual German women is associated with their desire to engage in or having previously engaged in submissive sexual behaviors but not dominant behaviors. This pattern of correlations aligns with sexual script theory and content analyses of dominance and submission and gender in pornography. It does not align with the perspective that measures of pornography consumption are simply proxies for factors such as a high sex drive or an adventurous approach to sex.