Religiosity, Perceived Effects of Pornography Use on Personal Sex Life, and Moral Incongruence: Insights from the German Health and Sexuality Survey (GeSiD)

ABSTRACT

Although online pornography use appears to be a mainstream activity, there is little information, particularly outside of the USA, about how consumers perceive its impact on their sexuality. Considering increasing concerns about pornography use, this lack of evidence has sociocultural and clinical ramifications – especially because the recently proposed Moral Incongruence model (MI) suggests that some individuals may see their pornography use as problematic independently of the frequency of use. Using data from 4,177 adults from the 2018–2019 national probability-based German Health and Sexuality Survey, we explored self-perceived impact of pornography use on personal sex life and the role of MI. Most participants (61.7%) reported no impact of pornography. Women were characterized by significantly higher odds of reporting positive relative to no impact, while men had higher odds of reporting mixed/negative compared to no impact. Participants in both the positive and the mixed impact group reported a significantly higher frequency of pornography use than participants in the no impact group. In line with the MI model, we observed a significant relationship between participants’ religious upbringing and self-perceived negative (relative to mixed) impact of pornography use. Social relevance and clinical implications of the findings are discussed.

Notes

¹ It should be noted that the authors explored levels of positive relative to negative impact. They did not assess the absolute prevalence of reporting positive, negative, and no impact of pornography use.

² According to the World Values Survey data (see http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSOnline.jsp).

³ Participants who had previously reported that they were not religious were assigned “never” as their frequency of practicing faith.

⁴ The term “effect” does not refer to any causal relationship.

Additional information

Funding

The study was funded by the German Federal Centre for Health Education [Grant numbers: Z2/25.5.2.1/18; Z2/25.5.2.1/20].