Preliminary Insights from a U.S. Probability Sample on Adolescents’ Pornography Exposure, Media Psychology, and Sexual Aggression
AUTHOR(S)
PUBLISHED
2021 in Journal of Health Communication
KEY FINDINGS
- According to this nationally representative survey of 14-18-year-olds, 84.4% of males and 57.1% of females had viewed pornography. Researchers also found that exposure to pornography and the belief that pornography is realistic was significantly associated with sexual aggression.
ABSTRACT
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... READ FULL ABSTRACT
EXCERPTS
- "Consistent with expectations, having been exposed to pornography and perceiving pornography as realistic were associated with increased sexual aggression risk. Also, a stronger level of identification with pornographic actors was associated with an increased probability of sexual aggression, albeit at a marginal level of statistical significance."
- "The point-estimates for the correlations between sexual aggression and pornography exposure were positive for both males and females and of a magnitude consistent with statistically significant meta-analytic results."
