Effects of sex in the media


In the past several decades, researchers have spent continuous efforts on exploring how sexual content in the media influences individuals' perceptions of sex, marriage, and rape. Among these sexual content in the media, pornography has been a big business, generating $13 billion just in the U.S. in 2006.[1] Researchers have reached agreement on some effects of sexual content in the media, such as arousal and some attitudinal effects. However, there is still an argument on whether the Catharsis effects resulting from the sexual media content.

Types of sexual content

Scholars analyzed the violent sexual content based on different types of sexual content, including rape, bondage, torture, sadomasochism, hitting, spanking, hair pulling, genital mutilation, and nonviolent sexual material. Nonviolent sexual material is much harder to categorize. Some nonviolent sexual material is entirely mutually consenting and affectionate, depicting vagina or oral intercourse in a loving, or at least non-coercive, fashion. On the other hand, some nonviolent sexual material is sexually dehumanizing, depicting degradation, domination, subordination or humiliation. Nonviolent sexual material presents the woman with few human attributes besides body parts and sexual appetite.[2]

Effects of sexual content in the media

Arousal

One crucial effect of consuming sexual media is sexual arousal, "the heightened physiological state that energizes sexual behavior. Arousal can be measured in two methods. One method is self-ratings of participants and the other is that physiological measures such as electronic sensors measuring penile tumescence, vaginal lubrication, or temperature (thermography).[3]

Some researchers found that men are more aroused by sexual media than are women, especially in response to sexually violent or dehumanizing materials.[4] Also, sexual violence may only appeal to sex offenders and other violence-prone men and even to "normal" men if the victim is portrayed as being aroused by the assault. Slides or verbal descriptions of coercive sex are more appealing to sexually coercive men physiologically than "normal" men.[5] Since the Internet provides an unlimited number of websites that feature any sexual desire that the user wants, it results in sexual arousal because the stimuli are new.[6] Carnes think that the Internet can allow people to see any of their fantasy, which usually do not exist in most people's daily lives. These images can be reactivated during sexual intercourse.

Attitudinal effects

One of the major criticism from scholars is that the dehumanization of women in sexually explicit materials. Men rated their own partners as being less physically endowed after seeing beautiful female nudes engaged in sexual activity. It seems that the voluptuous model has become the norm or anchor to which real people are compared.[7] Zillmann and Bryant also found that such effects are not limited to men.[8][9] Compared with control groups, both men and women who watched weekly pornographic films later reported that they are less satisfied with their partners' affection, appearance, sexual curiosity, and sexual performances. They also sex with less emotional involvement and showed greater acceptance of premarital and extramarital sex. They placed fewer values on monogamy and marriage. Teenagers who have watched a whole day of talk shows discussing sexual topics later overestimated the frequency of such behaviors.[10][11]

Individual differences

Different people have different reactions to sexual content in the media. Men are more likely to be aroused by sexual content than women. Gettleman argued that men are main consumers of sex videos, with an estimated 71 of sex videos consumed by men by themselves.[12] It does not mean that men are more interested in sex videos than women. Women have been found to be more interested in written and directed by women and for women,[13][14][15] while men appear to be more interested in seek out sexual media and be aroused by it. Malamuth and Check found that men, not women, were as aroused by a rape scene as by a consenting sex scene but only if the victim was portrayed as enjoying the rape and coming to orgasm. The men were not aroused if the victim was shown to be terrorized.

Personality can also be an indicator of individuals' different reactions to sexual content. Bushman, Bonacci, van Dijk, and Baumeister found that narcissistic men will be more likely to enjoy the rape scene preceded by affection between the parties than low narcissists did.[16] Borgaert's study considered intelligence is a mediator between personality and arousal attitudes. Men, who have lower intelligence and higher aggressive/antisocial inclinations, are more likely to prefer violent sexual stimuli than men higher in intelligence and lower in aggressive/antisocial tendencies.[17]

Behavioral effects

Bryant and Zillmann concluded that potential behavioral effects of violent sexual media content include: catharsis, disinhibition, imitation, and desensitization.

Catharsis

Catharsis holds that "vicariously participating in others' fictionalized hostility or aggression enables drama watchers, readers, or listeners to be purged of their anger and hostility and thereby become less aggressive.[18]" This popular idea comes directly from psychodynamic models of personality. The Catharsis effect has been applied to support loosening restrictions on pornography and it has also been reported by sex offenders as a strategy for reducing impulses for committing an offense.[19][20] However, very few empirical studies support the catharsis effect.

Disinhibition

Disinhibition is that after being repetitive exposed to sexual materials may undermine learned social sanctions against using violence that usually inhibit aggressive behaviors. People may become more aggressive after watching, reading or listening to media violence because they may tend to legitimize using violence in real life. A dozen experimental investigations have explored the disinhibition effects and provided support for this hypothesis.[21][22]

Imitation

Imitation is explained in terms of social learning theory, which argues that "humans have evolved an advanced capacity for observational learning that enables them to expand their knowledge and skills on the basis of information conveyed by modeling influences".[23] Social learning explains how observers match the performances of models. Four things must happen before imitation: The first is the attentional process, which people must have seen, read, listened to sexual materials. The second is the retention process, which people can retain some memories of what they have seen, read and listened to. The third is the production process, which the learner must have the capabilities to replicate the action. The fourth is the motivational process, which people must have sufficient desire or will to perform what the violent behavior. Only when all of these four conditions were met, people imitate the performances of actors.

Desensitization

The desensitization effects have been touted by some researchers. The desensitization hypothesis argues that the repeated exposure to sexual violent materials can result in less emotional responsiveness to violence in fiction, news, and reality fare, which could, in turn, result in an increased acceptance of violent behaviors. However, this notion was touted a lot and limited research evidence available supports disinhibition effects.

Mitigating the negative effects

Harris and Barlett concluded that a few studies have developed extensive pre-exposure training and/or post-exposure debriefing procedures to lessen the desensitizing effects.[24] Linz found that by offering pertinent educational information about rape myths reduced the effect of desensitization, which means experimental participation can also help reduce the rape myth acceptance. Wilson, Linz, Donnerstein, and Stipp conducted a field experiment, they found that men who are older than 50 had preexisting attitudes reinforced and actually blamed women for rape after seeing the film. In other words, preexisting attitudes and personal experience should be considered when conducting research studies.[25]

Allen, Emmers, Gebhardt, and Giery concluded that experimental studies show positive significant effect between pornography exposure and rape myth acceptance, whereas correlational field studies how a very small effect or nonexistent effect.[26] But the relationship consistently stronger when the sexual materials was violent than it was nonviolent.

References
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  3. Bryant, edited by Jennings; Oliver, Mary Beth (2009). Media effects : advances in theory and research (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge. p. 307. ISBN 978-0-8058-6449-6.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
  4. Mallamuth, Nell. "Sexually explicit media, gender differences, and evolutionary theory".
  5. Lohr, Bethany A.; Adams, Henry E.; Davis, J. Mark (1997). "Sexual arousal to erotic and aggressive stimuli in sexually coercive and noncoercive men". Journal of Abnormal Psychology. 106 (2): 230–242. doi:10.1037/0021-843X.106.2.230.
  6. Carnes, Patrick J. (13 October 2011). "Cybersex, Courtship, and Escalating Arousal: Factors in Addictive Sexual Desire" (PDF). Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity. 8 (1): 45–78. doi:10.1080/10720160127560.
  7. Utility, Probability, and Human Decision Making Selected Proceedings of an Interdisciplinary Research Conference, Rome, 3-6 September 1973. Springer Verlag. 2013. ISBN 9789401018364.
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  9. Zillmann, Dolf; Bryant, Jennings (April 1988). "Pornography's Impact on Sexual Satisfaction1". Journal of Applied Social Psychology. 18 (5): 438–453. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1988.tb00027.x.
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  12. Gettleman (1999). "XXX=$$$". Manhattan Mercury: A6.
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  14. Quackenbush, Debra M.; Strassberg, Donald S.; Turner, Charles W. (February 1995). "Gender effects of romantic themes in erotica". Archives of Sexual Behavior. 24 (1): 21–35. doi:10.1007/BF01541986.
  15. Mosher, Donald L.; MacIan, Paula (January 1994). "College men and women respond to X‐rated videos intended for male or female audiences: Gender and sexual scripts". Journal of Sex Research. 31 (2): 99–113. doi:10.1080/00224499409551736.
  16. Bushman, Brad J.; Bonacci, Angelica M.; van Dijk, Mirjam; Baumeister, Roy F. (2003). "Narcissism, sexual refusal, and aggression: Testing a narcissistic reactance model of sexual coercion". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 84 (5): 1027–1040. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.84.5.1027.
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  25. WILSON, BARBARA J.; LINZ, DANIEL; DONNERSTEIN, EDWARD; STIPP, HORST (December 1992). "The Impact of Social Issue Television Programming on Attitudes Toward Rape". Human Communication Research. 19 (2): 179–208. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.1992.tb00299.x.
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