A Longitudinal Analysis of Political Ideology, Pornography Consumption, and Attitude Change
Replication and Extension
Abstract
Abstract: The effects of pornography have been of central focus to communication scholars for decades. Despite this, recent meta-analyses reveal a need for additional longitudinal studies probing pornography’s socializing effects, in general; a need for attitudinal studies, specifically; and a need for studies of US adults, in particular. In response to these needs and recent calls for replication studies across the social and behavioral sciences, the present study replicated and extended an early US longitudinal study finding that pornography consumption predicted over time interindividual change in adults’ sexually permissive attitudes among liberal, but not conservative, pornography consumers. The results provided (a) evidence that the original study was neither a sampling fluke nor a product of model misspecification; (b) further evidence that longitudinal associations between pornography use and content congruent outcomes are not simply due to reverse-causation; and (c) preliminary optimism for the reproducibility of findings in the field of pornography effects.
Just as the potential effect of mass media on social attitudes has been of longstanding interest to communication scholars as a group (Klapper, 1948; Schramm, 1949), so has the potential effect of pornography on sociosexual attitudes been of longstanding interest to sexological communication scholars as a subgroup (Linz & Malamuth, 1993; Wallace & Wehmer, 1971; Zillmann & Bryant, 1982). Despite this, meta-analyses aggregating findings from naturalistic pornography use studies (i.e., studies of actual, rather than experimentally induced, exposure to pornography1), and sociosexual attitudes indicate that cross-sectional survey designs are far more common than longitudinal survey designs (Burnay et al., 2022; Hald et al., 2010). For instance, Tokunaga and colleagues’ (2019) recent meta-analysis of pornography consumption and impersonal sexual attitudes identified 33 cross-sectional surveys but only six longitudinal surveys. Because they can assess whether earlier pornography consumption is associated with a change in sociosexual attitudes over time, as well as whether associations between pornography use and sociosexual attitudes are simply a function of selective exposure (i.e., of persons who already hold a particular sexual attitude gravitating to sexual media content that buttresses it), longitudinal survey designs are more instructive of potential cause-and-effect relationships than cross-sectional survey designs (Peter & Valkenburg, 2009, 2010; Wright, 2012, 2015).
Within the extant corpus of longitudinal studies on pornography and sexual socialization, research outside of the United States appears to be more frequent than research in the United States. For example, a count of longitudinal studies included in recent meta-analyses of pornography and sexual aggression (Wright et al., 2016), impersonal sex (Tokunaga et al., 2019), and condom use (Tokunaga et al., 2020) reveals twice as many international (n = 14) as US studies (n = 7). As the sociosexual cultural climate of the United States is unique, especially when it comes to pornography (Linz & Malamuth, 1993; Waltman, 2021), it may be unwise to assume that findings from international studies are generalizable nationally. In sum, there is a need for additional longitudinal studies probing pornography’s socializing effects, in general; a need for attitudinal studies, specifically; and a need for US studies, in particular.
Further, there is a need for replicative studies. This need is well known in the social and behavioral sciences as a whole (Cova et al., 2021; Keating & Totzkay, 2019; The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2019). But its imperativeness in the field of pornography and socialization is being increasingly acknowledged (Carrotte et al., 2020; Willoughby et al., 2021; Wright & Tokunaga, 2022a). Following these calls for replication of prior pornography studies, as well as calls for additional research on moderation in pornography effects research (i.e., research attempting to identify for whom and under what circumstances pornography is most likely to socialize; e.g., Baams et al., 2015; Hald et al., 2013; Vandenbosch & van Oosten, 2017), the present study both replicates and extends an early2 US longitudinal study finding that pornography consumption predicted over time interindividual change in sexual permissiveness for liberal, but not conservative, pornography consumers (Wright, 2013). As detailed in the Method section, the COVID-19 pandemic made this replication possible through an unexpected but fortuitous addition to a nationally representative panel project funded by the National Science Foundation and carried out by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center (NORC).
Replication of Wright (2013)
Wright (2013) noted that both formal content analyses of pornography and anecdotal scholarly commentary about the content of pornography converged to suggest a highly permissive, nontraditional approach to sex. In particular, ample evidence suggests that sex involving unmarried youth, often marketed specifically as teenagers, is common in popular pornography (Jensen, 2010; Paul & Linz, 2008; Peters et al., 2014; Vannier et al., 2014). Given these content observations, as well as cross-sectional studies from other countries finding positive correlations between pornography use and various nontraditional sexual attitudes (e.g., Lo & Wei, 2005; Omori et al., 2011; Peter & Valkenburg, 2008), Wright (2013) hypothesized that pornography consumption would also be associated with more accepting attitudes toward teenage sex among adults in the United States. Wright (2013) noted that this hypothesis was consistent with a number of general social learning frameworks in media effects research, such as the media practice model (Steele, 1999) and cultivation theory (Gerbner et al., 1994).
But Wright (2013) went further than positing that pornography consumers would, on average, be more accepting of teenage sex. While a novel test for such a relationship in nationally representative panel data gathered from US adults was empirically and theoretically important, Wright (2013) noted that it was even more important to test for theoretically specified individual differences that might moderate the relationship. Invoking the sexual script acquisition, activation, application model’s (3AM) morality clause (i.e., the likelihood of attitude change decreases as sexual content–sexual morality disconnect increases; Wright, 2011; see also Wright, 2020), Wright posited that political ideology should moderate the relationship:
Exposure to pornography should activate permissive sexual scripts in the minds of both liberal and conservative consumers. At the point of application, however, the two groups should differ. Conservatives’ absolutist views on sexual morality should discourage acceptance of the activated script; liberals’ sexual individualism should increase the likelihood of sympathy for the activated script. In sum, attitude change in the direction of more sexual permissiveness from exposure to pornography should be more likely to occur for liberals than conservatives. (p. 16)
This supposition was supported. Earlier pornography consumption predicted interindividual change over time toward more sexual permissiveness for liberals, but not conservatives. But this finding has never been replicated. Given the quality of Wright’s (2013) data (i.e., generated by a nationally representative, full-probability survey) and support for 3AM-grounded contingency predictions on other moderator variables (e.g., the moderating effects of perceiving pornography as socially realistic, identifying with pornographic actors, and believing pornography contains functional sexual information; Wright, Herbenick, & Paul, 2022; Wright, Herbenick, & Tokunaga, 2022; Wright, Sun, et al., 2019; Wright, Sun, & Steffen, 2018), it is expected that the interaction in Wright (2013) will replicate. Thus, the present study’s first hypothesis is:
The interaction between political ideology and pornography consumption on later sexual permissiveness in the present study replicates that reported in Wright (2013).
Extension of Wright (2013)
Unheeding of Becker’s (2005, p. 285) third recommendation for the selection of control variables (i.e., “Beware the ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ approach”), Wright (2013) included a long and assorted list of covariates, in addition to controlling for baseline attitudes toward teenage sex: age, education, ethnicity, ever having had extramarital sex, gender, number of sexual partners in the prior year, ever having had paid sex, and frequency of attendance at religious services. If these variables were confounds (i.e., causally responsible for both sexually permissive attitudes and pornography consumption), it would seem that controlling for baseline sexual permissiveness would have been sufficient to account for their contribution to spuriousness (if variable set c causes both x and y, controlling for y at T1 should account for c’s confounding influence, unless c’s influence on y does not occur until T2, which seems unlikely in the present context).
Although some of these control variables were included to appease reviewers, and although Wright has since acknowledged the potential problems of this approach (Wright, 2021a; Wright & Tokunaga, 2022b; Wright, Tokunaga, Herbenick, et al., 2022a; see also Bushman & Anderson, 2021; Slater, 2015), it is still the case that the inclusion of control variables necessarily changes the focal predictors (through their residualization) and that models with and without controls can lead to substantively different results (Becker, 2005; Becker et al., 2016; Meehl, 1971; Miller & Chapman, 2001; Prot & Anderson, 2013; Sleep et al., 2017).
The analysis for the first hypothesis (H1) includes all of Wright’s (2013) control variables. If the results replicate Wright (2013), there will be double-evidence (original + replication results) that pornography consumption interacts with political ideology to prospectively predict interindividual change in US adults’ sexual permissiveness when age, education, ethnicity, ever having had extramarital sex, gender, number of sexual partners in the prior year, ever having had paid sex, and frequency of attendance at religious service are held constant. But what about when adjusting only for demographics, which is more common in the pornography effects literature (Wright, Tokunaga, Herbenick, et al., 2022a)? And what if only the focal predictors (i.e., pornography consumption and political ideology) are modeled? As confidence in the robustness of the pornography consumption × political ideology interaction would be enhanced via its demonstration across covariate-inclusive and covariate-free models, these queries are taken up by the present study’s first and second research questions:
Is there still an interaction between political ideology and pornography consumption on later sexual permissiveness when adjusting for demographic variables only?
Is there still an interaction between political ideology and pornography consumption on later sexual permissiveness in a parsimonious, covariate-free model?
The reverse-causality question was also left unaddressed by Wright (2013). Specifically, Wright (2013) only assessed whether earlier pornography consumption interacted with political ideology to predict later sexual permissiveness. Wright (2013) did not assess the related possibility that earlier sexual permissiveness interacted with political ideology to predict later pornography consumption. As reverse-causality is one of the preferred counterarguments made by scholars committed to the position that pornography cannot be a source of sociosexual influence (Wright, 2021b), it is important to extend Wright (2013) and also address this possibility.3 The present study’s third research question is thus:
Does sexual permissiveness interact with political ideology to prospectively predict pornography consumption?
Method
Procedure and Participants
Data for the present study come from the 2018 (T1) to 2020 (T2) General Social Survey (GSS) longitudinal panel (Davern et al., 2020). Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at University of Chicago, the GSS is the only full-probability, personal-interview survey designed to monitor changes in both social characteristics and attitudes in the United States (About the GSS, 2022). First conducted in 1972, the GSS surveys residence-inhabiting adults aged 18 or older. All residences in the United States have an equal chance of being selected for inclusion in the GSS; adults within each residence have an equal probability of being interviewed (For Survey Participants, 2022). To maximize measurement validity, the GSS began using computer-assisted interviewing in 2002 (Smith et al., 2015).
After providing funding for several panel surveys in the earlier 2000s (including the panel employed by Wright, 2013), NSF’s contributions to this element of the GSS ceased, as did any further panel studies (J. Son, personal communication with author, October 23, 2018). However, due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the early months of 2020, GSS staff redesigned the 2020 GSS in several ways to protect the health and wellbeing of participants and interviewers (Davern et al., 2020). One of these changes involved a primarily web-administered re-interview of participants in the 2018 GSS. Thus, the COVID-19 pandemic led to an unexpected addition to the previous (but heretofore defunct) GSS panels.
Applying weight variable WTSSNR_24 to account for the original probability of selection in the 2018 GSS, as well as household size, subsampling design, and adjustment for nonresponse at the National Frame Area (NFA) level (see Davern et al., 2020), participants in the present study5 were 125 men (45.40%) and 151 women (54.60%) ranging from 18 to 89 years of age at baseline (M = 48.24, SD = 17.03). White persons comprised 73.60% of participants, whereas 26.40% were persons of color. Participants had completed 14.11 years of education, on average (SD = 2.86).
Focal Measures
The present study’s focal measures are described below. Zero-order correlations are presented in Table 1. Validity evidence for each measure is described in detail in the original study (Wright, 2013). Additional evidence of measurement validity can also be found in a variety of other GSS studies (e.g., Perry, 2020; Wright et al., 2013; Wright, 2015; Yang, 2016). The magnitude of test–retest reliability coefficients was consistent with prior panel studies interested in the potential effects of pornography among US adults as well as other samples (e.g., Perry 2017a, 2017b; Vandenbosch & van Oosten, 2017; Vandenbosch et al., 2018; Ward et al., 2015).
Pornography Consumption
Pornography consumption was assessed by asking participants if they had viewed an X-rated movie in the prior year (0 = No; 1 = Yes). At T1, 27.50% of participants indicated they had viewed pornography in the prior year. At T2, the percentage of viewers increased to 35.80%. The correlation between T1 and T2 pornography consumption (i.e., test–retest reliability) was r = .56, p < .01.
Sexual Permissiveness
Participants’ sexual permissiveness was assessed at T1 and T2 by asking whether they thought it was wrong for unmarried 14–16-year-olds to have sex. Response options ranged from 1 = always wrong to 4 = not wrong at all (T1: M = 1.90, SD = 1.01; T2: M = 1.99, SD = 1.12). The correlation between T1 and T2 sexual permissiveness (i.e., test–retest reliability) was r = .59, p < .01.
Political Ideology
Participants’ liberal–conservative ideology was assessed at T1 by asking whether they identified themselves as liberal or conservative. Response options ranged from 1 = extremely liberal to 7 = extremely conservative (M = 4.03, SD = 1.52). Although only the T1 measurement was needed to explore the present study’s hypothesis and research questions, the T1 measure was correlated with its T2 counterpart to explore test–retest reliability. The correlation between T1 and T2 political ideology was r = .67, p < .01.
Results
Analytic Approach
Following Wright (2013), three-step hierarchical linear regressions were employed to answer H1 and RQs 1–2. In addition to baseline sexual permissiveness and political ideology, Wright (2013) entered age, education, ethnicity, ever having had extramarital sex, gender, number of sexual partners in the prior year, ever having had paid sex, and frequency of attendance at religious services as “controls” in Step 1. Pornography consumption was entered in the second step, and the interaction between pornography consumption and political ideology was entered in the third step. The analytical approach to H1 in the present study emulated this sequence. In alignment with The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s (2019) report on reproducibility and replicability in science (see also Cova et al., 2021), the pornography consumption × political ideology interaction in Wright (2013) was deemed replicated if the point-estimate in the present study fell within its 95% confidence interval (CI).6
The analysis for RQ1 followed the same step sequence and variable entry as H1, sans the inclusion of ever having had extramarital sex, number of sexual partners in the prior year, and ever having had paid sex in Step 1. The analysis for RQ2 also followed this sequence, but with the focal variables only (i.e., all control variables were excluded from the model).
A three-step hierarchical logistic regression was used to probe RQ3. In this model, baseline pornography consumption and political ideology were entered in the first step, sexual permissiveness was entered in the second step, and the interaction between sexual permissiveness and political ideology was entered in the third step.
Findings
Hypothesis 1
The first hypothesis predicted that the interaction between political ideology and pornography consumption on later sexual permissiveness in the present study would replicate Wright (2013). The interaction coefficient in Wright (2013) was b = −.28, 95% CI [−.48, −.08]. The interaction coefficient in the present study was b = −.27, 95% CI [−.44, −.09] (see Table 2 for full model results). As the point-estimate in the present study was within the 95% CI of Wright (2013), the first hypothesis was supported. The numerical similarity of the point estimates (−.28 vs. −.27) and 95% CIs (−.48, −.08 vs. −.44, −.09) is also worth noting.
Research Question 1
The first research question asked whether the interaction between political ideology and pornography consumption on later sexual permissiveness would remain when adjusting for demographic variables only. The answer to the first research question was affirmative. The point-estimate in the demographic-only model, b = −.27, 95% CI [−.44, −.10], was identical to the point-estimate of the model replicating Wright’s (2013) full slate of controls (see Table 2 for full model results).
Research Question 2
The second research question asked whether the interaction between political ideology and pornography consumption on later sexual permissiveness would remain in a parsimonious, covariate-free model. The answer to the second research question was affirmative. The point-estimate in the covariate-free model was significant (see Table 2) and in the same direction as the covariate-inclusive models, b = −.23, 95% CI [−.41, −.06].
Because focal variables that have been residualized due to the inclusion of controls are no longer a one-to-one replica of the focal variables as they actually manifested among study participants – and because the focal variables, are, by definition, of focal interest – parsimonious, covariate-free point-estimates are generally more pragmatically and theoretically valuable than covariate adjusted-point estimates, especially when models with and without controls lead to similar substantive conclusions (Becker et al., 2016; Meehl, 1971; Miller & Chapman, 2001; Sleep et al., 2017; Wright, 2021a). Accordingly, the covariate-free model was used to estimate the association between earlier pornography consumption and later sexual permissiveness for liberals, moderates, and conservatives, bliberal = .63, p < .01; bmoderate = .16, p = .19; bconservative = −.30, p = 19. These coefficients indicate that significant interindividual change over time toward more sexual permissiveness was evidenced only for liberal pornography consumers; the coefficients for moderates and conservatives were not significant (with the sign of the estimate even reversing to negative for conservatives). Figure 1 presents a visual depiction of the liberal and conservative simple slopes (derived from Dawson, 2014).
Research Question 3
The third research question asked whether sexual permissiveness interacted with political ideology to prospectively predict pornography consumption. As delineated at the outset of this section, a three-step hierarchical logistic regression was used to answer this research question. In Step 1, T1 pornography consumption was positively related, OR = 15.60, 95% CI [8.03, 30.32], and political ideology negatively related, OR = .80, 95% CI [.66, .98], to T2 pornography consumption. Adding T1 sexual permissiveness to the model in step two did not improve model fit, Δχ2 = 1.63, p = .20. Likewise, adding the interaction between T1 sexual permissiveness and T1 political ideology to the model did not improve model fit, Δχ2 = 1.02, p = .31. Thus, the answer to the third research question was negative. Earlier sexual permissiveness was unrelated to subsequent pornography consumption, whether in interaction with political ideology or as a standalone predictor.
Conclusion
Using two-wave panel data from the NSF-funded GSS, the present study replicated Wright’s (2013) finding that earlier pornography consumption predicts interindividual increases in US adults’ sexual permissiveness for liberals, but not conservatives. This finding is consistent with the sexual script acquisition, activation, application model’s (3AM) morality clause, which states that sexual scripts that are discordant with consumers’ moral perspectives will be less likely to be applied than sexual scripts that are companionable with consumers’ moral perspectives (Wright, 2011, 2020). This interaction was found whether using Wright’s (2013) long list of controls or using more parsimonious models (including a covariate-free model). Thus, the present study provides evidence that the original Wright (2013) interaction was neither a sampling fluke nor a product of model misspecification. The present study also adds further evidence (see Wright, 2021b) that longitudinal associations between pornography use and content congruent outcomes are not simply due to reverse-causation, since earlier sexual permissiveness was not predictive of later pornography consumption either in the aggregate (i.e., at the main effect level) or for liberals (i.e., in interaction with political ideology). While just the beginning of what the authors hope is a wave of replication studies, the present findings (along with recent others, e.g., Willoughby et al., 2021; Wright, 2022; Wright, Tokunaga, & Herbenick, 2022; Wright & Tokunaga, 2022a) should provide some optimism for the reproducibility of findings in the field of pornography effects.
Several elements of the present study point to directions for subsequent research. First, although comparisons of dichotomous and interval pornography consumption measures suggest that both yield theoretically anticipated results (Wright, 2022; Wright et al., 2017; Wright, Tokunaga, Herbenick, et al., 2022b), dichotomous measures may attenuate effect sizes (Bland & Altman, 2011; Bogaert et al., 1999) and also preclude assessments of possible curvilinear relationships between pornography use and sociosexual outcomes (Willoughby et al., 2021; Wright, Bridges, et al., 2018; Wright, Miezan, et al., 2019; Wright, Steffen, et al., 2019). Subsequent replicative studies should include interval indices of pornography consumption (e.g., Peter & Valkenburg, 2008, 2009, 2010) to see if larger effect sizes ensue and to probe for nonlinear interactions between pornography consumption and political ideology on sexually permissive attitudes. Second, while differing perspectives on morality are a fundamental element of conservative and liberal political ideologies (Graham et al., 2009; Haidt, 2012), subsequent replicative studies should include indices such as those utilized by Wright et al. (2014). This study of US adults found evidence that the association between progressive views on homosexuality and pornography consumption is stronger when pornography consumers are morally relativistic. The theoretical logic of Wright (2013) should extend to this type of morality measure as well as political orientation.
Electronic Supplementary Material
The electronic supplementary material is available with the online version of the article at https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000370
Paul J. Wright (PhD, University of Arizona) is Professor and Director of Communication Science at Indiana University’s flagship Bloomington campus. He is also Core Faculty Partner of The Center for Sexual Health Promotion in The School of Public Health and an affiliate faculty member at the Kinsey Institute. He studies sexual socialization and sexual health, with an emphasis on media effects.
1The internal validity value of well-conducted experimental pornography research is indisputable. However, concerns about the ecological validity of pornography experiments necessitate the triangulation of their results with naturalistic designs (Berkowitz & Donnerstein, 1982; Hald et al., 2010; Hodson, 2022; Mecham et al., 2021).
2To our knowledge, Wright (2013) was one of the first longitudinal panel studies probing whether earlier pornography consumption predicted later sexual attitudes among US adults.
3In fairness to Wright (2013), however, it should be stated that selective exposure and reverse-causality are not one in the same. Reverse-causality means that the complete causal dynamic between pornography consumption and attitudes is attitudes → pornography. From this perspective, earlier pornography use has no effect on later attitudes, but preexisting attitudes affect later selection of pornographic content. While selective exposure also indicates the presence of an attitudes → pornography effect, it does not exclude the possibility that consuming pornography also affects attitudes (i.e., pornography → attitudes). The presence of both selective exposure (attitudes → pornography) and sexual socialization (pornography → attitudes) is indicative of reciprocal influence (Wright, 2021b). Wright’s (2013) demonstration that earlier pornography consumption predicted later sexual permissiveness after adjusting for earlier sexual permissiveness “renders an explanation of reverse-causality for his findings implausible” (to partially quote/partially paraphrase Collins et al., 2004, p. 287, who, like Wright, 2013, focused on the “sexual media → sexual outcome after controlling for earlier levels of the sexual outcome” relationship in their study of US youths’ sexual TV consumption and sexual behavior).
4The GSS staff recommends using WTSSNR_2 as the standard weight for analysis of the 2018–2020 panel data (Davern et al., 2020).
5To avoid respondent fatigue, not all participants in a particular GSS survey are asked all of that year’s questions. Additionally, in a given year, different sets of participants are asked different sets of questions. Participants in the present study were asked about their sexually permissive attitudes and pornography consumption in both 2018 and 2020.
6Wright (2013) provided point-estimates, but not 95% CIs. Because GSS data are publicly available, it was possible to reproduce the analysis with the inclusion of confidence intervals. Using confidence intervals to assess replication is a conservative approach – if there is bias, it is toward the disconfirmation of, rather than the confirmation of, replication (Cumming & Maillardet, 2006).
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