Correlates of support for censorship of sexual, sexually violent, and violent media

Willingness to ban various forms of sexual, violent, and sexually violent media was assessed through a random digit dialing survey of adults in Seminole County, FL. Of 1,291 eligible adults contacted, 304 (23.5%) completed the interview. Substantial majorities (71–77%) supported censoring sexually violent media, about half (47–54%) supported censoring nonsexual violent media, and about one third supported censoring nonviolent sexually explicit movies (32%) and videotapes (28%). Principle components analysis of these items revealed two clear factors: support for banning sexual media and support for banning violent and sexually violent media. Sexual conservatism, sex role stereotyping, authoritarianism, age, gender, concern about pornography's effects, and support for a local anti‐pornography campaign were consistently more highly correlated with support for censoring sexual media than with support for censoring violent media. Regression analysis showed that support for banning sexual media and concern about pornography's effects both contributed to the prediction of support for anti‐pornography campaigns. Contrary to expectations, those low in sex role stereotyping showed low levels of support for censoring sexual media and low levels of concern about pornography's effects, relative both to fundamentalists and other respondents.