Internet Pornography and Violence Against Women Flashcards
1
Q
Where does the passion for porn start?
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2
Q
What is the controversy and criminality around Porn?
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3
Q
What does technology have to do with the increase in porn consumption?
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4
Q
How has technology continue to fuel porn consumption?
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5
Q
What are the correlations between Porn and Covid?
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- Searches for “corona virus” on Pornhub first appeared on January 25th 2020 and continued to rise with the peak increase of 24.4% on March 25th when they offered free Premium access in multiple countries
- Over a month-long period from February 24/25, 2020 to March 17, 2020, all 27 countries, for which data were provided, showed increases in pornography use, typically ranging from 4 to 24% (Pornhub, 2020).
- However, in jurisdictions, in which Pornhub made its premium services free given quarantines and stay-at-home mandates, more substantial increases were observed: 57%, 38%, and 61% increases in Italy, France, and Spain, respectively, each occurring one day after free premium access was offered (Pornhub, 2020).
- The daily relative search volume (RSV) data from Google Trends found searching for ‘pornography’ increased after late March 2020, close to the date when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.
- The number of daily new cases of COVID-19 was positively correlated with the traffic of Pornhub, and the RSV for ‘pornography’.
- Moderation analysis - significant main effect of daily new cases of COVID-19 and the RSV for ‘social distancing’ in predicting Pornhub traffic/RSV for ‘pornography’.
- The RSV for ‘social distancing’ significantly moderated the relationship between daily new cases and Pornhub traffic/RSV for ‘pornography’. That is - a stronger COVID-pornography use association was observed with increased social distancing awareness (Lau et al. 2021).
- Covid & lockdowns = increases in social isolation, loneliness and stress
(Wang et al., 2020) - People with problematic pornography use may also relapse to pornography use in the setting of feeling powerless, hopeless, and disconnected from support programs (Mestre-Bach et al., 2020)
- A sharp increase in porn searches was seen in nations where coronavirus was widespread (Zatoni et al., 2020, Pornhub insights)
- Aside from the sexual arousal and enhancement, coping, emotional avoidance and boredom are all linked with greater use of pornography (Paul & Shim, 2008; Peter & Valkenburg, 2011; Bothe et al., 2020)
6
Q
What were the changes on Pornhub in Australia?
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7
Q
How does porn relate fo violence?
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- IP can be an avenue to explore sexuality (Arrington-Sanders et al., 2015)
- However, it often depicts behaviours that many adults do not perceive as mainstream, nor consider enjoyable, and/or are high risk in terms of sexual health - e.g. only 2–3 % of heterosexual encounters involve condom use
(Gorman, Monk-Turner, Fish, 2010) - Public health concern– effect on sexual socialisation of young people by influencing their understanding of which sexual behaviours and attitudes are normative, acceptable and rewarding (Wright, Sun, Steffen & Tokunaga, 2014)
- Positive correlation demonstrated between perceived realism of IP and degree of influence on an individual’s sexual development (Peter and Valkenburg 2010)
- Heterosexual men’s interest and engagement in dominant behaviours: both interest in watching and more frequent consumption of IP associated with men’s desire to engage in, or having already engaged in, behaviours such as hair pulling, slapping, choking, and verbal abuse etc (Wright et al., 2014).
8
Q
What is the IP and Violence link?
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- Sexual objectification is the instrumentalization or division of a woman’s body, body parts, or sexual functions from her personhood (Fredrickson and Roberts,1997)
- Prioritising of female genitalia in IP, often to exclusion of female actor’s face (Fritz & Paul, 2017).
- Exemplified by particular sexual acts that suggest a women is simply an instrumental sexual object.
- IP also depicts women as entities whose primary function is male sexual gratification
- Men are often depicted as socially powerful and physically violent = reinforces assumptions about gendered sexual behaviour (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997; Wood, 1997).
- Women are often passive and coerced or “tricked” into sexual acts
- Pornography is normalising sex acts that most women do not enjoy and may experience to be degrading, painful or violating (Crabbe and Corlett 2010; Stanley et al., 2018, Fahs et al., 2014; Marston & Lewis,2014).
- Whether pornography consumption is a reliable correlate of sexually aggressive behaviour continues to be debated.
- Meta-analysis (Wright, Tokunga, Kraus, 2015) on pornography consumption and actual acts of sexual aggression based on general population studies ― Analysed 22 studies from 7 different countries
― Consumption was associated with sexual aggression in the US and internationally, among both males and females
― Seen in both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies
― Associations were stronger for verbal than physical sexual aggression, although both were signifcant
9
Q
What are the theoretical underpinnings of Porn and violence?
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- Cognitive: Priming Theory: (Berkowitz, 1984, 1990, 1993) – violent media activates or ‘primes’ other aggressive thoughts, evaluations, and behaviours such - greater willingness to use violence in interpersonal situations.
- Social learning theory: young children imitate almost any specific behaviours they see, including aggressive acts seen in media
(Bandura, 1977) - Social/Learning & Behaviour: Connection between observation and behaviour acquired through three social-cognitive structures
(Bushman & Huesmann, 2001; Huesmann, 1988, 1998):
1. schemas about a hostile world
2. scripts for solving social problem that focus on aggression
3. normative beliefs that aggression is acceptable
10
Q
More theories on IP Violence Link
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- Substantial theory explains processes through which exposure to media violence can cause short & long-term increases in aggression and also contribute to violent behaviour (Bandura, 1977; Berkowitz, 1993; Eron, 1963; Huesmann, 1988, 1998)
- Schema: describes a pattern of thought or behavior that organises categories of information and the relationships among them.
- Cognitive: Gender Schema theory (Bem 1981) – explains the development and consequences of sex typing/how children acquire sex-defined characteristics. During adolescence, understanding of socially dominant definitions of male and female roles is extended and refined.
- Physical maturing and socio-cultural context defines how to evaluate and handle these changes and prompts development of social and sexual selves in ways that are congruent with socially prevailing gender roles.
- Sexual Script theory (Learning & Behaviour) – Huesmann (1986) - three components to understanding media effects on behaviour: the acquisition of behavioural scripts, their activation and their application
- Acquisition effect occurs when an observer learns a new behavioural script, of which he or she was not previously aware (Wright, 2011a). Activation of a script occurs when media exposure provides a cue for retrieval:
― Variety of IP provides the opportunity to acquire new sexual scripts and to abstract higher order scripts (Huesmann, 1986) to form general rules, such as notions of female desire and malleability of consent portrayed in IP (Paul, 2010; Peter & Valkenburg, 2010; Stanley et al., 2016).
Activation can occur with stimuli other than the original media source of the script, such as via sexual arousal – applied in this context (Wright, 2011)
11
Q
What are the opposing views that media doesnt affect real life aggresion?
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- Personality: Viewers’ pre-existing level of aggression draws them to violent media rather than use promoting aggressive behaviour (Elson & Ferguson, 2014). This effect is found BUT longitudinal studies, statistical modelling and experiments all show causal effects as well.
- Social violence is falling but violent media use is increasing, so there can be no connection: This argument seems to make sense at face value, but has several flaws:
― Nearly all the research is about everyday aggression, not the much more severe category of ‘acts of violence’
― Moderate aggression and violence are always multifactorial, so it is
impossible to ascertain accurately just what contribution a single factor makes
― The multifactorial nature of societal violence means that some contributing factors can be increasing whilst others are decreasing, regardless of the overall trend. - Some critics suggest the GAM theory does not adequately allow for individual differences due to biology/personality.
- But detailed applications of the GAM clearly factor in these and many other influences (Anderson & Bushman, 2002; Bushman & Anderson, 2002; Warburton & Anderson, 2015, 2019).
- Some critics have also questioned the validity and relevance of social cognitive theories - odd approach given their huge evidence base
- Critics also suggest that the small effect sizes found are not meaningful.
- Recent theorists have noted that many smaller psychological effects are very important (e.g.. Funder & Ozer, 2019), as are many very small effects found in medicine.
12
Q
What are criticisms of validity of laboratory studies?
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Criticisms have been made of the validity of laboratory measures of aggression, and note an issue with the external validity of eliciting aggressiveness in a lab:
― Some lab measures of aggression are better than others (e.Ritter & Eslea, 2005) but a number are well validated, including
currently used paradigms such as the CRTT (e.g., Warburton &
Bushman, 2019)
All lab studies have external validity issues, the key is replication across multiple study types. This triangulation of evidence is demonstrated in media violence research - effects in lab experiments, cross-sectional correlational studies, longitudinal studies over time, observational studies and brain imaging studies.
13
Q
Describe the link between internet pornography and children?
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- Australian teenagers and young adults are high users of the Internet with 83% of teens and 90% of 18–24 year-olds going online three or more times daily (ACMA, 2015) - ample opportunities for both unintentional and intentional exposure to IP.
- Most of the the free mainstream IP sites have NO barriers to entry for under 18s, including Pornhub, one of the most popular free sites.
- Alteration in distribution model of IP has important implications for young people: “Pornography has moved from the brown paper bag to smartphones, computer screens and popular culture. In the adolescent world of attraction, desire, exploration and love, internet porn is normalised, shared and imitated” (Crabbe & Corlett, 2014)
- Prevalence rates of intentional exposure - 7% of 10- to 17-year-olds in a U.S. study (Ybarra & Mitchell, 2005) to 59% in a more recent study of Taiwanese
10- 12th-grade students (Chen, Leung, Chen, & Yang, 2013). - Prevalence rates for unintentional exposure of children to IP - 19% amongst
10- to 12-year-olds in the U.S (Mitchell et al., 2003) to 60% among Australian girls and 84% among Australian boys aged 16 to 17 (Flood, 2007). - McKee (2010) - percentage of Australians viewing pornography before 16 increased from 37% in the 1950s to 79% in the early 2000’s
- U.S. study found average first exposure age was 11 years, with 100% of 15-year-old males and 80% of 15-year-old females reporting they had been exposed to violent, degrading IP (Horvath et al., 2013).
- UK survey by the National Centre for Prevention of Cruelty to Children
(NSPCC) of more than 1,000 children (11-16 years) found that at least half had been exposed to IP (Martellozzo et al., 2016). Almost all (94%) seen IP by age 14. 39% of 13-14 year olds and 42% of 15-16 year olds said IP had given them “ideas about the type of sex to try out”. - In an Australian study by Lim et al. (2017) in a sample of Victorians aged 15-29 years, the authors reported that:
― 87% of participants reported ever viewing pornography
― Male participants reported higher frequency of pornography viewing than female participants
― median age at first exposure to IP was 13 years for males and 16 years for females
14
Q
Why do young people look at pornography and what do they feel?
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Our Watch survey of nearly 2,000 young Australians (aged 15-20) (2018) found:
― young women were more likely to have first come across pornography by accident (56%) compared to young men (46%).
― For those who sought it out, the primary motivation for first doing so
for both young women and young men was curiosity (78%).
― Other motivations included sexual stimulation (26%), keeping up with
peers (18%), and sexual education (14%).
― Respondents reported a mix of views and feelings about
pornography, often holding conflicting views at the same time.
― 62% of young women and 47% of young men reported that they think that pornography is not at all realistic
15
Q
What are the consequences of exposure?
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- IP viewing motivations linked to mood management or emotional avoidance were positively associated with problematic IP (PIP) viewing. Higher levels of sexual sensation seeking, adversarial sexual beliefs and moral disengagement were also associated with the tendency to adopt personal sexual behaviours consistent with those viewed in IP (IP-congruent behaviour) and PIP viewing. Sensation seeking, moral disengagement, IP-related fantasizing and the interaction between moral disengagement and PIP viewing were all significant predictors of IP-congruent behavior (Bernstein et. al., 2021).
- Environment and person factors that might lead individuals to be more susceptible to the development of problematic IP viewing, and the endorsement of gendered and sexually aggressive beliefs and attitudes were examined. Positive associations were found between problematic IP viewing, stereotypical gendered attitudes, IP-congruent beliefs (including beliefs that endorse sexual coercion). Problematic IP viewing was also associated with psychological vulnerability factors such as higher levels of sexual impulsivity, depression, and the tendency to dissociate. Higher stereotypical gendered beliefs, higher IP-congruent sexual beliefs, and higher sexual impulsivity all uniquely contributed to the prediction of problematic IP viewing
(Bernstein et al. 2022).
3.Theoretical review - consumption of IP represents a credible risk factor in the perpetration of aggression and violence against women. Sexual violence, abuse, and degradation of women is commonly depicted in mainstream heterosexual IP. Contention is that depictions of violence in IP may contribute to real world aggression and violence against women, with two relevant spheres of inquiry proposed.
