News bloggers have run amok lately with a study claiming to show evidence of a link between porn watching and divorce. The study, published last month in Psychology of Popular Media Culture, spawned headlines like:
Study Says Your Spouse’s Porn Habit Might not be So Harmless After All
Watching Porn May Lead to Divorce: Study
Revealed—Porn Addiction can Lead to Divorce
At first blush, the study appears fairly well done from a technical standpoint. It has a good sample size (551), a decent mix of participants including divorcees, and the researchers controlled for nine potential confounders including marital unhappiness, gender, and religiosity. They designed the study directly in response to limitations of other studies in this area and clearly state that their data is correlative in nature.
That being said, there are a number of issues which call into question the validity of the study’s results:
- Participants were only asked if they watched porn in the last year, not how often.
- Participants who admitted to watching porn were not asked any questions about the types of porn watched, their motivation for watching, etc.
- The extrapolation that positive attitudes towards extramarital affairs lead to marital issues and then divorce.
Perhaps the biggest issue with this study though is how it was reported. Yes, journalism tends to go for the gut with catchy, dramatic headlines. But by making the jump directly from attitude to action, the reporters, and researchers, failed to do due diligence to the topic. Simply put, the study did not actually look at porn consumption and rates of divorce. It looked at porn consumption and attitudes towards affairs. While attitudes can be strong predictors of behavior, and affairs are a common cause of divorce in the U.S., there are other mediating factors. Additionally, the study only establishes a relationship between the two variables rather than a specific causation.
Furthermore, the authors are operating on several broad assumptions that do not necessarily hold up in real life. These include:
1) Extramarital sex always leads to the breakdown of marriage. Given the many types of relationships that exist, it is certainly possible that people who have more positive attitudes towards extramarital sex also have different attitudes towards and expectations of monogamy in marriage.
2) Porn is a uniform product that always portrays extramarital sex positively. There are as many types of porn out there as there are sexual interests in the world. Porn is not one-size-fits all. Without delving further into the types of porn people are viewing, it is incorrect to say watching any porn, regardless of what is portrayed, automatically leads to a change in attitude and, further, behavior.
The researchers do deserve some props for not outright stating that porn leads to divorce and for creating a more complex study to look at an issue which continues to be of interest to many people. It is particularly interesting to note that most of the articles reporting on the study’s outcome were written in countries with stricter gender rules and conservative sexual views. Despite all this, the study’s lack of nuance around pornography as a product and its consumption makes the results difficult to respect, and no doubt played a role in the overblown reporting.
Other Sexual Health News this Week
Mayor de Blasio Touts Reduced Rent for People with AIDS or HIV (Daily News)
Judge Overturns PA’s Same-sex Marriage Ban (WNEP) and the governor has no plans of challenging this decision. (CNN)
Kansas County Rejects State Funds for Contraception After Commissioner Conflates IUDs With Abortifacients (RH Reality Check)
While N.Y. State Suggests HIV Tests for 13-Year-Olds, Sex Ed in Elementary School (CBS Local), the Louisiana House voted down a bill that would allow additional sexual health questions from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance (YRBS) System to be asked. (NOLA.com)
Inmates Allege Sexual Abuse by Prison Doctor (USA Today)
Federal Judge Strikes Down Oregon’s Same-Sex Marriage Ban (CNN)
La. Plans New Abortion Restrictions Modeled after Controversial Texas Rule. (Fox News)
Important Dates
The following conferences are taking place in May and June. Click on each title for more information and to register.
The 46th Annual AASECT Conference, Monterey, CA, June 4-8.
The Sero Project’s HIV is Not a Crime conference, Grinnell, IA, June 2-5.
13th Annual Philadelphia Trans Health Conference, Philadelphia, PA, June 12-14.