Watching porn makes men sexist

New study confirms age old preconception: porn makes men and women sexist. There is a catch, however: the study suggest that the people who become more sexist by watching porn were already unpleasant and had disagreeable personalities to begin with.

The study was done by researchers at the University of Copenhagen’s department of public health, who surveyed 200 people and rated their level of agreeableness.

“The study shows the importance of individual differences in research on pornography and underscores that effects of pornography on attitudes may not be the same for everyone,” lead author Gert Martin Hald, associate professor in the department of public health, says in a press release.

Porn caused just minor increase in sexist attitudes

The researchers asked 200 men and women aged 18 to 30 about their past pornography consumption. They also looked at their level of agreeableness, which according to the authors means ‘antagonism’, ‘coldness’, ‘hostility’, ”suspiciousness’, ‘disagreeability’, ‘unfriendliness’ and ‘self-interest’.

Afterwards, the researchers showed them porn in a laboratory and measured their responses to various sexist attitudes. Only the men with low levels of agreeableness showed a rise in hostile sexist beliefs after watching porn, and even this was just a minor increase.

“The study is important because it may help nuance the view of effects of porn and enable us to better understand for whom adverse effects of porn are most likely and the mechanisms by which such effects occur. This could be used in prevention, education, or clinical interventions”, says Hald.

Changing the way we think about porn

Earlier this year, the same group of researchers found that porn may not influence teenagers’ sexual behavior as much as often thought.

In this study, they surveyed 4,600 people between 15 and 25 in the Netherlands, and asked them how much porn they watched, their number of sexual partners, whether they had experienced one-night stands, exchanged money for sex or participated in “adventurous sex” like threesomes. They also tried to determine how sexually confident, assertive and ‘sensation-seeking’ their respondents were.

Also here, they found out that the teenagers’ own personal dispositions played a much bigger role on their future sexual habits.

universitypost@adm.ku.dk

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