Their data revealed that participants who reported a younger age of exposure were more likely to seek power over women, based on their answers to the survey, which defines that behavior as "perceived control over women at both personal and social levels." Meanwhile, participants first exposed to porn later in life were more likely to exhibit promiscuous "playboy" behavior, defined by the inventory as "desire for multiple or non-committed sexual relationships and emotional distance from sex partners." In essence: The younger you watch porn, the more likely you are to be an asshole to women. Is it really that simple? [...]
Media is typically thirsty to take this kind of data and run with it. But claims that porn causes misogyny, or that "boys who watch porn are more likely to become misogynists," are pretty blatant distortions of what this data really represents. Take it from the researchers themselves: "Because it's not a causal relationship, we can't say which one came first," says Christina Richardson, a UNL doctorate candidate on the team that conducted the study. [...]
Research that relies on self-reported data can be problematic, Tarrant goes on to explain, especially when it comes to culturally loaded, baggage-laden topics like sex and gender: The answers are simply less reliable. Plus, as both Richardson and Tarrant point out, there are plenty of other variables to consider in the relationship between porn exposure and later gender behaviors: Did they grow up with religion? How were they raised, ideologically? What was their sex education like, if any? "There are so many other things that factor into how we understand ourselves or form our gender identities, and all those other things can also impact how a teen boy might experience exposure to pornography," Tarrant says. [...]
Porn is an object of lurid fascination in popular science, but based on my conversations with researchers, from their perspective it's a morass of uncertainty, flimsy claims, and, like this University of Nebraska–Lincoln study, small sample sizes. The psychological, sociological, and physiological implications and long-term effects of porn consumption have been an area of interest for decades, but the research itself is notoriously fuzzy. Add to that the social taboo surrounding porn, and it gets messy. "The way researchers define [porn] can often depend on their political perspectives to start out with, what kind of content they find alarming," Tarrant explains.
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