Only Bad for Believers? Religion, Pornography Use, and Sexual Satisfaction Among American Men

Abstract

Research has often demonstrated a negative association between pornography use and various intrapersonal and relationship outcomes, particularly for men. Several recent studies, however, have suggested that the negative association between pornography use and these indicators is stronger among more religious Americans, suggesting that moral incongruence (engaging in an activity that violates one’s sacred values) and the attendant shame or cognitive dissonance, rather than pornography use per se, may be the primary factor at work. The current study tested and extended this theory by examining how religion potentially moderates the link between pornography use and sexual satisfaction in a national random sample of American adults (N = 1,501). Analyses demonstrated that while pornography use was negatively associated with sexual satisfaction for American men (not women), among men who rarely attended religious services or held a low opinion of the Bible this negative association essentially disappeared. Conversely, the negative association between frequency of pornography consumption and sexual satisfaction was more pronounced for men with stronger ties to conventional religion. These findings suggest that the connection between pornography use and sexual satisfaction, especially for men, depends largely on what viewing pornography means to consumers and their moral community and less so on the practice itself.

Notes

¹ Though less than ideal, this response rate exceeds that of the average public opinion survey at 9% (Pew Research Center, 2012), and recent analyses demonstrate that the accuracy of parameter estimates are minimally related to response rates (American Association for Public Opinion Research, 2008; Singer, 2006). Moreover, Pew Research Center’s (2012) analysis of the representativeness of public opinion surveys found that surveys that “are weighted to match the demographic composition of the population continue to provide accurate data on most political, social and economic measures.” Finally, the 2017 BRS was compared to the 2016 General Social Survey on a number of measures central to the following analysis (see Supplementary Table 1). While some small differences exist, the estimates from the 2017 BRS compare quite favorably.

² Ancillary analyses (available upon request) examined whether other religion measures predicted sexual satisfaction for men or women, including how religious/spiritual participants felt they were, their prayer frequency, and their frequency of Bible reading. Only frequency of Bible reading was significantly associated for women, and no category was significant for men. Because the Bible reading measure is similar enough to the biblical literalism measure, the authors opted to use only the more conventional measures of religious community involvement (attendance) and affirming theological beliefs consistent with fundamentalist Christian communities (literalism).

³ For women, there was very little variance in their pornography viewing compared to men, which made cross-product gender interactions unhelpful. When the pornography use measure is made binary (1 = Yes, 0 = No), thus removing the distribution issue, there is a significant interaction between gender and pornography use predicting sexual satisfaction (p < .01; models available upon request). In addition, zero-order correlations (see Supplementary Tables 2 and 3) show an essentially nonexistent correlation between pornography use and sexual satisfaction for women (r = −.016, p = n.s.), compared to men (r = −.124, p < .01). Last, a Chow test was run for the full model with gender specified as the cutoff point for the structural change; the result was significant (p < .001), indicating that separate models for men and women would be preferred because of the differences between the two.

⁴ This was a curious finding that contradicts previous research. In ancillary analyses, we examined models without the sexual frequency measure. While there were no substantive differences for men, for women the romantic partner measure became significantly and positively associated with sex satisfaction (results are available upon request). Thus, the negative association could be due to a suppressor effect, with sex frequency mediating the positive link between being in a relationship and women’s sexual satisfaction, causing the former to flip its sign from positive to negative (see MacKinnon, Krull, & Lockwood, 2000 for their explanation of suppression effects).

⁵ Ancillary analyses (available upon request) tested for interactions by pornography use and relationship status; none was significant for men or women.