more porno

A study done measured effects of short-term exposure to pornographic material on the interpersonal relationships between men and women. Both men and women were exposed to films for 11 minutes, then paired into male-female groups and asked to do a problem-solving activity together. During the activity, the behavior was videotaped and analyzed. The results of analysis were

The experimenters found that men who viewed the sexually explicit films (both erotica and pornography) showed more dominant behaviors, touched their female partners for longer periods of time, and ignored their partner’s contributions more often that males who viewed the news clips. Furthermore, men in the pornography condition interrupted their partners more and showed more anxious behaviors than those in the other two groups.

The result that was a bit more worrisome was

Female participants were blind to the first portion of the experiment. Results showed that women’s behaviors correlated highly with their male partner’s behaviors. Women whose partners had viewed sexually explicit materials showed similar levels of anxiety, physical proximity, partner touch, and gazing as their partners. This behavioral matching, argue the researchers, is particularly notable. It suggests that women are affected by a partner’s use of sexually explicit material, even when they are unaware of such use.

It seems interesting here, as well, how people can have more influence than they'd imagine normally. If this is true, they would probably feel extra responsibilities in response to knowing what they could do. A simple example could be how the behavior of parents change knowing that their lives are intimately tied to their children's lives. This goes against a common myth nowadays that pornography and similar things "are ok since they doesn't hurt anyone". However, from the opinion of this one paper, it does seem like this behavior bears noticable effects the principal actor and, more importantly, the people he interacts with. It's hard to know if those effects could hurt or not.

From a Christian point of view, it offers a new dimension into what it means for a man to be the "lead" or the "head" in a relationship as well. I haven't done enough thinking and reflecting on what this might mean, but I have a few cursory thoughts on it. I've heard sermons describing this lead as a sense of responsibility for the woman's spiritual life as well as your own - this would extend and tie that responsibility not only to her's but your spiritual life as well. Pornographic effects would then also extend to interactions between platonic friends (or "brothers" and "sisters" in Christian lingo) - how would "guarding your heart" or not "being a stumbling block" change with this in perspective? Furthermore, in this study, the partners were simply college students randomly paired - for a married couple, I could imagine significant differences. I don't think I know enough about "two becoming one" to comment on this yet though.

The source for these quotations is an interesting set of articles (available here), from a conference at Princeton. I've only read two so far (Neuroplasticity and Acquiring Tastes/Loves, and Pornography's Effects on Interpersonal Relationships), but they're interesting, and they flesh out a lot of points I heard brought up back in my last post on the "Price of Pleasure" pornography documentary.