Procreative well-being and pornography – analyzing the script. Public health implications revealed through an ethological lens

Abstract

An ethological model of human procreative well-being is proposed and the goodness-of-fit of pornography’s script to that model is considered. Deducing an evolutionary template for procreative well-being from an ethological analysis links attachment dynamics to procreative success. Alongside parent–child attachment, pair-bond attachment in the procreative couple looms large as an element of optimal procreative relationship structure and quality. Key elements of pair-bond attachment are documented. Turning next to an empirical examination of the sexual behavioral system in humans, we see evidence of an evolutionary design supportive of attachment as well as reproductive exigencies of procreative well-being. Sexual system mechanisms promoting both reproduction and attachment are evident in the evolutionary design. We next employ script theory to identify key elements of the sexual script promulgated by pornography. Joining these two analyses, we compare the evolutionary, attachment-based template for procreative success in juxtaposition to pornography’s sexual script to evaluate the goodness-of-fit of pornography use to attachment success and, by extension, procreative well-being. We conclude that there is an ethological case to be made for considering pornography use as a public health risk. Implications of the model of procreative well-being for the practice of couple therapy are given mention.

Keywords:

• attachment
• ethology
• family
• marriage
• pornography
• procreative well-being
• sexual behavioral system
• sociobiology

Notes

1 The caregiving behavioral system (Bowlby, 1969/1982, 1988; Cassidy & Shaver, 1999, 2008, 2016; George & Solomon, 2008) is both the complementary system to the attachment behavioral system and more active in the context of secure attachment. Further, all generative activity is amplified where there is secure attachment. General productivity (creativity) as well as teaching, mentoring, helping behavior, and leadership (caregiving) in all manner of social systems and contexts are supported and catalyzed by secure attachment.

2 Other scholars have similarly employed script theory (Wright, 2011) or other models (e.g., 3AM; Leonhardt et al., 2017) in analyzing sexual media or pornography and its various scripts and effects.

3 A relational conceptualization and enactment of the sexual experience threatens to insinuate context and constraints disruptive to a singular pursuit of erotic gratification. For this reason, pornographic depictions and scripting largely avoid authentic relational depictions. What results is a fundamentally anti-relational, anti-attachment script and socialization.

4 See Leonhardt et al. (2017), for a discussion of differing estimates of the prevalence of such explicitly misogynistic, “paraphilic” depictions.

5 See Bridges et al. (2010), Fritz and Paul (2017), Klaassen and Peter (2015), and McKee (2005, 2015) for different estimates of prevalence, and see Leonhardt et al., (2017), for a discussion of conceptual and measurement issues producing these discrepancies.

6 Alongside obvious depictions of misogynistic sexual behavior, anti-relational, anti-attachment sexual scripting in pornography (Butler et al., 2017) is arguably a subtle sexual violence to the social psyche of women and men alike.