Untangling the Porn Web: Creating an Organizing Framework for Pornography Research Among Couples

With or Without You: Associations Between Frequency of Internet Pornography Use and Sexual Relationship Outcomes for (Non)Consensual (Non)Monogamous Individuals

“…Monogamous NCNM and CNM individuals who used internet pornography more frequently also included their primary partners more frequently in such activity. This finding resonates on recent evidence showing that individuals are increasingly using internet pornography with their partners (Willoughby et al, 2019), and suggests that such trend is extended to different relationship types. Among monogamous individuals only, those who reported a frequent pornography use also indicated to be sexually dissatisfied (partially supporting Hypothesis 5a), but those who frequently included their partner in pornography use indicated to be sexually satisfied and more able to sustain their sexual arousal (supporting Hypothesis 5b).…”

“…However, none of these differences emerged for CNM individuals, including those pertaining to the gender gap in pornography use (Carroll et al, 2017). This shows the importance of assessing multiple dimensions (e.g., individual background factors, relational context) when examining the role of pornography use on couple processes (Willoughby et al, 2019). Also, our finding that individuals in monogamous and CNM relationships are younger, compared to individuals in NCNM relationships, indicates that younger individuals may be more open to having alternative relationship agreements and consensual relationship dynamics (Carroll et al, 2017;Sizemore & Olmstead, 2017), and challenge the idea that consensual non-monogamy is perceived as a result of sexual dissatisfaction (e.g., Balzarini et al, 2018;Conley et al, 2013).…”

“…Literature has extensively examined correlates of pornography use, including internet pornography, at individual, relational, and social levels (for reviews, see Carroll et al, 2017;Dwulit & Rzymski, 2019;Grubbs et al, 2019;Manning, 2006;Park et al, 2016;Rasmussen, 2016;Willoughby et al, 2019;Wright et al, 2016Wright et al, , 2017. For example, individuals who use pornography more frequently tend to have more positive attitudes toward pornography use (Willoughby et al, 2016), score higher on traits such as narcissism (Kasper et al, 2015), and participate in more sexually aggressive behaviors (Vega & Malamuth, 2007).…”

“…Instead of focusing on discrepancies between partners in pornography use (e.g., Willoughby et al, 2016), we built on the evidence that pornography use can be positively and negatively associated with sexual relationship outcomes. We took a step further and examined if these associations depended on the relational context (for a discussion, see Willoughby et al, 2019), more precisely on the (non)monogamy agreements. Research found that monogamous individuals who used pornography together with their partner were as satisfied as those with no pornography use, but more so than those who used pornography by themselves (Maddox et al, 2011).…”

But What’s Your Partner up to? Associations between Relationship Quality and Pornography Use Depend on Contextual Patterns of Use within the Couple

“…These issues are very complex, and it seems unlikely to us that useful explanations will eventually boil down to popular epithets like "Porn Kills Love!" It is our hope that this research will help our field move beyond simple "monkey see, monkey screw" explanations of pornography's impact by incorporating more thorough considerations of the context of pornography use within relationships and the antecedents of such use (Campbell and Kohut, 2017;Leonhardt et al, 2018;Willoughby et al, 2020), as well as the panoply of known correlates and confounding variables (Baer et al, 2015;Perry, 2019;Vaillancourt-Morel et al, 2019;Fisher and Kohut, 2020;Kohut et al, 2020), and relevant social psychological theory that is tied to such variables. This figure depicts the hypothesized similarity-dissimilarity effect by illustrating the prediction of relationship satisfaction with an interaction between actors' and partners' solitary pornography use (b = .25).…”