EROTICA: STUDIES OF BEHAVIORAL EFFECTS
Davis and Braucht in a retrospective study, used data from 365 subjects from seven different types of social groups, from jail inmates to clerical students. In a psychometric tour de force, self-report measures of sexual deviance, sexual experience, exposure to pornography, character, and peer associations were constructed and statistically interrelated. The measure of character had four components: 1) ability to recognize the necessity of a moral decision, 2) inclination to act on a moral rather than on a selfish basis, 3) level of moral reasoning, and 4) interpersonal character evaluated by peers. The sexual deviance measure counted frequencies of behaviors such as voyeurism, rape, and tranvestism. Moral character showed a modest negative correlation (r = – .25) with sexual deviance.
Davis and Braucht found that the amount of exposure to pornography correlated negatively with the overall index of character for subjects first exposed to pornography after the age of seventeen years. The amount of exposure was positively correlated with sexual deviance and with early heterosexual experience, homosexual, and deviant sexual practices. Exposure was also correlated with social—peer, neighborhood, and family—deviance. This latter finding suggests that exposure to pornography may not be a causal variable but rather an extraneous one which tags along with the deviant peer/deviant behavior relationship. When deviant family and deviant peer circumstances are statistically eliminated from the correlation, the relationship between age of viewing and character is not different from zero at the ninety-five-percent level of confidence. Similarly, when one calculates the partial correlation between exposure to pornography and sexual deviance, eliminating the effect of peer pressures, the result is not different from zero.
Their own analysis, plus that of the reader, suggests that Davis and Braucht have found exposure to pornography to be an extraneous variable in the relationship between individual sexual deviance and social environment. As Davis and Braucht acknowledged, there is “the possibility that exposure (to pornography) is merely part of or a product of adopting a sexually deviant life style”.
Goldstein reported a retrospective study in which samples of rapists, pedophiles, homosexuals, transsexuals, heavy users of pornography, and a control group sample from the community at large were interviewed regarding their experiences with erotic material. The striking finding consistent across types of exposure (photos, movies, books) and samples was that:
Adolescent exposure to erotica was significantly less for all non-heterosexual and offender groups compared to the controls. During adulthood, the sex offenders and transsexuals continued to report less exposure to erotic stimuli than controls, [emphasis added] . . . The control groups sampled had significantly greater exposure to erotic materials during adolescence than the deviants, convicted sex offenders, or heavy . . . users of pornography.
These data are in rather sharp distinction to those of Davis and Braucht, since they suggest that sexual deviance significant enough to result in criminal conviction or psychiatric treatment is associated with a low degree of exposure to erotica. Moreover, the relatively high levels of exposure in the community at large were not related to significant sexual deviance.
Both male- and female-object pedophiles reported less exposure to erotica than controls did. When one considers the sharp drop in attacks against children, related to the easy availability of pornography as reported by Kutchinsky, one wonders whether pornography might have a therapeutic and/or prophylactic effect if used for the treatment of American sex offenders.
Rapists and pedophiles reported very little or no discussion of sex in their homes during childhood. Both groups held very conservative, uptight attitudes toward sex and were uncomfortable talking about it. Pedophiles had very low levels of adult sexual experience, but rapists reported high frequencies of intercourse. Both groups reported very little satisfaction with sex. Although Goldstein reports other significant differences between rapists and pedophiles and between male-versus female-object pedophiles, the repressive and inhibited character of sexual emotions is common to both groups and is consistent with low exposure to and low interest in pornography.
Homosexuals and heavy users of pornography in the sample were reported by Goldstein to have liberal and tolerant sexual attitudes, low levels of adolescent sexual activity and high levels of adult activity. The author suggests that for the “user” group, interest in pornography may be a symbolic way to make up for lost time or an augmentation of infantile fantasy life which has persisted into adulthood. Other studies have found relationships among data for both groups which are somewhat supportive of both these hypotheses.
Laboratory studies of the effects of erotica on behavior are more limited in the ranges of behavior monitored but more exact in the manipulation and measurement of dependent and independent variables.
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