Pornography: Its Effect on Violence against Women

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the relationship between pornography and aggression against women. While it seems that certain types of pornography can influence aggression and other asocial attitudes and behaviors toward women, this is not the case for other forms of pornography, especially nonaggressive pornography. Nonaggressive materials only affect aggression when inhibitions to aggress are quite low, or with long-term and massive exposure. With a single exposure and normal aggressing conditions, there is little evidence that nonviolent pornography has any negative effects. It is the aggressive content of pornography that is the main contributor to violence against women. In fact, when one removes the sexual content from such films and just leaves the aggressive aspect, one finds a similar pattern of aggression and asocial attitudes. The chapter presents the studies that were conducted on the effects of aggressive pornography. In these studies, all the nonaggressive sexual films were chosen to be void of not only aggressive content but also any male–female power roles. In one sense the films may be considered erotic rather than pornographic. There was no evidence from these studies that the sexual content, arousal, or other aspects of the stimuli were related to aggression against women. Perhaps longer exposure, more massive exposure, or other factors might change this effect.