U.S. Adults’ Attitudes toward Gay Individuals’ Civil Liberties, Moral Judgments of Homosexuality, Support for Same-sex Marriage, and Pornography Consumption, Revisited

ABSTRACT

Approximately a decade ago, Wright and colleagues published three studies probing the nature of the relationship between heterosexual U.S. adults’ attitudes toward homosexuality and pornography consumption. Adopting an “effects” perspective (while acknowledging the nonexperimental nature of their data), they reasoned that pornography use could either lead to more antagonistic attitudes (by consumers viewing homosexuality through pornography’s lens of traditional masculinity) or accepting attitudes (by consumers viewing homosexuality through pornography’s lens of sexual liberalism). Results of all three studies aligned with the latter explanation. The present study evaluated whether the findings from these studies were replicable in the current U.S. sociocultural climate. No evidence of attitudinal reversal was found. Pornography use still directly predicted moral acceptance of homosexuality and support for same-sex marriage and indirectly predicted these outcomes via a more nontraditional attitude toward sex. Pornography use was neither directly nor indirectly related to attitudes toward civil liberties for gay persons in the more recent data, however. Additionally, contrary to the earlier findings, associations were unmoderated by education, sex, and ethnicity. Possible reasons for these discrepant results are discussed and the limitations to causal inference posed by correlational data are emphasized.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

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Notes

¹ The term “pornography effects” as used herein refers only to a field of study and interpretive orientation toward linkages between pornography use and sociosexual beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors (for an anthology of the broader field of media effects, see Oliver et al., 2020). The authors’ views on debates about whether there is sufficient evidence to conclude that sexual media (including pornography) affect the cognitions and behaviors of at least some consumers have been expressed elsewhere. The purpose of the present study was to conduct a replication analysis of the Wright et al. studies, which were conducted from an effects perspective (Wright & Bae, 2013; Wright & Randall, 2014; Wright et al., 2014), not to engage in debates about the field of pornography effects.

² Because findings can vary from study to study for an innumerable and often unforeseeable number of factors, it should be noted that replication studies of initial and/or influential findings are now recognized as an imperative regardless of whether there is a particular rationale for questioning the reproducibility of the original studies (Benoit & Holbert, 2008; Boster, 2002; Cova et al., 2018; Keating & Totzkay, 2019; McEwan et al., 2018). One of the reasons why replication studies are so rarely conducted, despite decades of impassioned calls for their increase across disciplines, is the notion that the findings of the original studies must be questionable for some obvious reason. Thus, although the “potential sociocultural shift” rationale provides a suggestive reason to wonder if the results of the Wright et al. studies will replicate contemporarily, it should not be viewed as the primary justification for this replication study. The present authors wholeheartedly concur that the social sciences need to immediately shift to a mind-set that sees replication studies as ends in and of themselves, regardless of any apriori rationale for their execution

³ All participants identified as heterosexual or straight on the GSS’s measure of sexual orientation (sexornt variable).