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Abstract
Pornography use, sexual attitudes, and age differences in sexual outcomes have each been of longstanding interest to sexologists. Few sexological studies have considered how the association between pornography consumption and sexual attitudes may be moderated by age differences, however. Further, few pornography scholars have directed their research efforts toward replication studies despite calls for an increased emphasis on replication across the social and behavioral sciences. This rapid communication attempted to replicate one of the earliest longitudinal panel studies of the relationship between pornography consumption and sexual attitudes among U.S. adults and the first to examine whether the prospective association between pornography use and attitudes toward premarital sex varies by the age of the pornography consumer. While the present replication results were largely consistent with the original study, they also reinforced the position that complexity of analysis and nuance of interpretation are dual requirements for informative replication studies.
Data availability statement
GSS data are available at https://gss.norc.org/
Notes
1 The present study is a theoretically driven replication assessment. That theory building and evaluation of empirical consistency are of inherent importance to the scientific enterprise is definitional and paradigmatic. To the question of application, Wright (Citation2015, pp. 89–90) stated the following (to which the present author is of like mind): “Purposes for scientific sex research can be theoretical, applied, or some combination of the two. At the theoretical level, the purpose of the scientific study of sexuality is to understand humans’ sexual beliefs or behaviors. Understanding in and of itself is seen as an end. At the applied level, the purpose of the scientific study of sexuality is to understand humans’ sexual beliefs or behaviors so as to enhance sexual health (broadly defined). The goals of this paper were theoretical. Attitudes toward premarital sex have been and continue to be an important indicator of sociosexual norms and values in the U.S. and there remains much variability in Americans’ premarital sex attitudes. The purpose of this study was to enhance understanding of how consuming pornography may affect this sociologically important attitude. Following Thornton and Young‐DeMarco (Citation2001), discussion of the sexual health implications of premarital sex was considered outside the scope of this study. But it is acknowledged that some researchers who study premarital sex attitudes list pragmatic motivations” (e.g., Elias et al., Citation2015).
2 Weight variable WTSSNR_2 was applied, per GSS directives (Davern et al., Citation2020).
3 Wright (Citation2015) provided point-estimates but not 95% CIs for their multiple-regression results. Because GSS data are publicly available, it was possible to reproduce these analyses with the inclusion of confidence intervals.
4 The negative interaction between pornography consumption and age on subsequent premarital sex attitudes indicates that the strength of the positive association between pornography consumption and more favorable premarital sex attitudes diminishes among older adults.
5 For a recent discussion of interaction effects and statistical power in the field of psychological science, see Sommet et al. (Citation2023).
6 Whether at the level of analysis or written conjecture, it is beyond the capacity of the present rapid communication to address the question of why pornography use might interact with age to predict premarital sex attitudes most reliably among married white U.S. adults. But it can – and should be – pointed out that a number of studies, both more recent and more distal, have generated findings consistent with the position that white persons and persons of color react differently to the contents of pornography (Tokunaga et al., Citation2015; Wright & Bae, Citation2013; Wright, Citation2022; Wright & Herbenick, Citation2022; Wright et al., Citation2023).
7 It should be noted that the tepid relationship between pornography consumption and premarital sex attitudes among U.S. adults does not mean that the relationship is similarly weak among other populations. Likewise, it does not mean that pornography and other sexual attitudes are not more strongly linked among U.S. adults (e.g., attitudes toward impersonal sex, sexualizing attitudes toward women; Burnay et al., Citation2022; Tokunaga et al., Citation2019).