EFFECTS OF EROTICA: SURVEY STUDIES
Despite the legal communities’ lack of interest in the behavioral and social correlates of exposure to erotica, scientists have spent considerable time and effort looking for empirically valid connections between these variables.
One of the first approaches to studying the effects of erotica was simply to ask people what they thought the effects were on themselves and others. Athanasiou, Shaver, and Tavris reported on a sample of 20,000 Psychology Today readers who indicated rather high levels of exposure. It is generally accepted that four out of five Americans between puberty and senility have been exposed one or more times to explicit sexual materials (Abelson and others, in COP).
It is interesting to note that the majority of Americans, when surveyed, accepts the display of erotica to adults who choose to see it. Most people report that their own response to erotica has been neutral or mildly positive and quite transient. There is much ignorance because (1) each person seems to feel that he or she is more tolerant than the average and (2) that although he or she himself or herself is not troubled by erotica, there are some undefinable “others” who would be (Abelson and others, COP; Abelson and Wilson).
The large sample (2,486 adults) survey data of the Abelson and others study have been reanalyzed (Merritt, Gerstl, and LoSciuto) to clarify those characteristics of the subgroups who felt erotica was beneficial versus those who felt it was not. The most striking finding was an age gradient. This age gradient persisted despite controls for gender, education, and levels of exposure. As might be expected, the authors found that “younger age groups tended to attribute solely desirable and/or neutral effects to erotica. . . . those who believed that pornography has largely or solely undesirable effects on its consumers were the oldest”. It is not at all clear whether these age-related changes in attitude are developmental or generational. Because the major technological changes in our society have affected sexual behavior (e.g., birth control and abortion techniques), it does not seem unreasonable to postulate generational differences as a major factor in the observed age gradient.
Other variables which often have been found to correlate with judgment of erotica and the effects of exposure to it are authoritarianism, religious preference, and church attendance.
Zurcher and others studied two towns in which antipornography “crusades” had been mounted. They found that the “conporns” tended to be individuals who were satisfied with what they perceived to be the social status quo, rather authoritarian, dogmatic, intolerant of others’ political views, with traditional and restrictive views on sexual matters. They also favored censorship to service and protect those views. Conporns associated the use of pornography with sexual deviance, crime, violence, drugs, family disruption, organized crime (87%) and/or a communist conspiracy (61%). Proporns by contrast tended to be far less disturbed by the topic and tended to oppose censorship.
Kirkpatrick is less kind than Zurcher in describing antipornography crusades. Writing in the Psychoanalytic Review he states:
“Antipornography crusading is a result of repressed sexuality and resultant moral indignation among the petty [sic] bourgeois. . . . We feel that sexual repression is the most fundamental category and that it in turn leads to repression in general and to the motivation for social movements which oppose pornography, and the ideologies of moral indignation which accompany these forms of social control”. Kenyon in a brief but entertaining and thought-provoking review of censorship up to 1974 notes:
One underlying fear is that the advocacy of too much sexual license will lead to the decline of family life, thus undermining the whole fabric of society, with resultant anarchy. Frequently quoted in this context is the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. However, if Gibbon’s famous account is to be believed, a powerful influence in bringing this about was the disastrous effect of the introduction of Christianity, with its misogyny and unhealthy preoccupation with sexual intercourse, chastity, mortification and flagellation.
One’s response to erotica and the labeling of erotic material as obscene is a complex and interactive process. Colson has shown that when subjects with low tolerance of erotica were given false Galvanic Skin Response feedback suggesting they were sexually aroused by the presentation of pedophilic material, they labeled the material unfavorably and called it obscene. It would seem that an operational, if totally idiosyncratic, definition of obscenity for an individual would be sexual arousal in response to material one is not supposed to like.
Byrne and others have proposed that an individual’s response to erotic material (that response being the final outcome of long-term socialization, experience, value judgments, and the like) is attributed to the object itself.
Thus, an erotic depiction is not just pleasing or displeasing to oneself, the depiction itself is good or bad. Next there is an attempt to justify such judgments and to vindicate them by attributing a general benefit or harm to the object. . . . What begins as a personal affective response can end as an elaborate belief system … it is not surprising that research data which are relevant to such systems tend to be accepted or rejected not on their own merits but on the basis of the justification or vindication which they provide.
*178/187/5*
Posted on April 6th, 2009 by admin
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