Predicting the Willingness to Engage in Non‑Consensual Forwarding of Sexts: The Role of Pornography and Instrumental Notions of Sex
AUTHOR(S)
PUBLISHED
2020 in Archives of Sexual Behavior
KEY FINDINGS
- The results of this longitudinal study showed that pornography use significantly predicted more willingness to forward sexts.
ABSTRACT
Although non-consensual forwarding of sexts (NCFS) is an important type of online sexual harassment behavior, the predictors of this behavior are currently understudied. The present study aimed to fill this gap by investigating online pornography use as a predictor of adolescents’ and emerging adults’ willingness to engage in NCFS in different contexts (i.e., forwarding a sexually explicit picture of a dating partner, relationship partner, friend, stranger or ex-partner). Based on previous literature on the role of pornography... READ FULL ABSTRACT
EXCERPTS
- "The present study was one of the first to investigate whether the use of pornography, in interaction with instrumental attitudes toward sex, predicts adolescents’ and young adults’ willingness to forward a sexually explicit image of someone without that person’s consent, in different contexts (i.e., relationship partner, dating partner, friend, stranger, ex-partner). The findings showed that for young people with both low and high levels of instrumental attitudes toward sex, pornography use predicted a higher willingness to engage in the non-consensual forwarding of a sexually explicit image of a stranger."
- "In line with previous research on individual differences in the effects of pornography (e.g., Kingston et al., 2009; Malamuth & Huppin, 2005; Malamuth et al., 2000), and in particular previous theorizations that the influence of (sexual) media use can be increased (or reduced) by the (lack of) resonance with pre-existing schema’s (Leonhardt et al., 2019; Wright, 2011), we found that the influence of pornography use on the willingness to engage in NCFS was stronger for individuals with high levels of instrumental attitudes toward sex, predominantly in the context of an image by a stranger."
