Implication Of Pornography

Pornography today is only a click away, sometimes not even that far, and often times making unrequested appearances on the edges of otherwise innocuous websites. Indeed, a 2008 online survey about pornography exposure concluded that 9 out of 10 male and 6 out of 10 female respondents were exposed to it during adolescence (Sabina, Wolak, & Finkelhor). Those numbers are not likely to decrease, given that pornography is a profitable business with an estimated 13 billion dollars yearly revenue (Jackson, 2012), and that it has never been as easily available as it is now since about 95 percent of the current U.S teen population has full access to an internet connection (Madden, Lenhart, Duggan, Cortesi, & Gasser, 2013).

Amidst consumers, pornography appears to be popular. In an anonymous survey of 688 Danish young adults, a great majority reported that pornography had a positive effect on their lives, this being particularly significant for males (Hald & Malamuth, 2008). Another study with American college students (Weinberg, Williams, Kleiner, & Irizarry, 2010) suggested that for many consumers, porn could be a way to learn about sexual practices and make them seem more appealing. However, such positivism is not as clear cut on research. Duggan and McCreary (2004) found that reading magazines focused on “improving” male physique was linked to poorer self-image on both gay and heterosexual males, and that porn consumption by gay males was linked to increased body image anxiety. The present study aims to see whether the same pattern of results holds true about women: Would women who watch porn have lower self-esteem?

In general, pornography seems to be a less pleasing experience for females than for males. According to a Swedish survey ...

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...ype of media that seems to be distinctively harsh against them. I hypothesize that because media consumption by itself is associated to negative self-image, and pornography seems to evoke violent connotations, the more pornography a woman consumes the lower her self-esteem will be and that this effect will be even more significant for violent porn. To test this, I will administer a survey to as many females as I can recruit from introductory psychology and sociology classes at a University for course credit. The survey will ask for basic demographic information such as age, and gender identification, include a self-esteem assessment, and inquire about pornography watching habits such as frequency and kind. I therefore have a 2 (self-esteem: high/ low) by 2 (type of porn: violent/ non-violent) design with both self-esteem and type of porn as within-subjects variables.