A Longitudinal Analysis of Political Ideology, Pornography Consumption, and Attitude Change

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.

On the Continued Need for Replication in Media and Communication Research

“…Drawing from local experience (as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Media Psychology), the explicit inclusion of replications in our general call for papers has netted only three submissions in the last three years (one each in 2021, 2022, and 2023). One of those has been accepted for publication (Wright, 2022). As scholars, we have the agency to move towards a replication culture.…”