Viewing pornography and sex guilt: The priggish, the prudent, and the profligate.

Abstract

Thirty-live male undergraduates were divided into three groups on the basis of their scores on Masher's Forced-Choice Guilt Inventory. The amount of time subjects spent viewing and rating photographic slides of varying erotic content was unobtrusively recorded. The viewing time of the low sex guilt group increased linearly as a function of increasing pornographic content. There was no significant increase in viewing time for high sex guilt subjects. Members of the moderate sex guilt group exhibited a curvilinear viewing pattern. These results arc consistent with a predicted defensive response on the part of high sex guilt subjects, thus supporting Mosher's conceptualization and measure of sex guilt.Psychological research in the area of pornography has begun to increase largely as a result of the appointment of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography by Congress in 1967. The present study grew out of research supported by the Commission and carried out by Amoroso, Brown, Pruesse, Ware, and Pilkey (1970) and Mosher (1970). These studies investigated the relationship between guilt feelings toward sex and voluntary exposure to erotic visual stimuli. The impetus for this study arose from a desire to test the popularly held concept that persons who advocate suppression of sexually oriented material arc often suppressing their own feelings about sex. Although they publicly condemn this material, such people privately enjoy being exposed to that which they condemn. The archetype of this type of person is, of course, the conservative member of the movie censor board.The Sex Guilt subscale of the Mosher Forced-Choice Guilt Inventory (FCGT; Mosher, 1966) was selected as an appropriate dispositional measure of guilt feelings toward sex. Sex guilt, as defined by Mosher's scale, is a "generalized expectancy for self-mediatedThe authors would like to thank Walter M. Baker for his help in completing this study and Thomas M. Ostrom and Anthony G. Greenwakl for their helpful comments.Requests for reprints should be sent lo Robert K.

Viewing Time Effects Revisited: Prolonged Response Latencies for Sexually Attractive Targets Under Restricted Task Conditions

“…Most viewing time research relies on portrayal of nude or only partly clothed persons, sometimes displaying the genital area (Harris et al, 1996; for the use of nude stimuli, see Brown, Amoroso, Ware, Pruesse, & Pilkey, 1973;Love, Sloan, & Schmidt, 1976;Quinsey et al, 1996;Ware, Brown, Amoroso, Pilkey, & Pruesse, 1972). In these experiments, PRELSAT effects could be considered a special case of a more general SCID Effect.…”

Effects of attitudes toward pornography upon male judgments of female attractiveness

“…Several studies have examined male preferences for pictures of attractive females that differed in their erotic content as a function of attitudes toward pornography. Perhaps not surprisingly, one finding is that propornography subjectsboth indicatea preference for stimuli rated as more erotic (literally rated as more' 'entertaining"; Wallace & Wehmer, 1972) and look longer at the stimuli (Love, Sloan, & Schmidt, 1976). There is less convergence for anti-pornography subjects, with Wallace and Wehmer (1972) reporting that their subjects found the stimuli rated more erotic as less "entertaining, " and Love et al (1976) finding no difference in looking time as a function of erotic content.…”

“…First, a neutral group was included in order to place potential differences between extreme groups in clearer context. Studies examining the consequences of differences in attitudes toward pornography typically do not include a neutral group, although Love et al (1976) is an exception. Second, the stimuli as a group were intended to be less obviously erotic, and the subjects were asked to rate the "attractiveness" rather than the "arousal" or "erotic nature" of the stimuli.…”

What’s Sex Got to Do with It? The Role of Sexual Experience in the Sexual Attitudes, and Sexual Guilt and Anxiety of Young Muslim Adults in Canada and the United States

“…Sexual anxiety has long been thought to play an important role in the sexual dysfunction of both men and women (Aluja, 2004;Beggs, Calhoun, & Wolchik, 1987;Hensel, Fortenberry, O'Sullivan, & Orr, 2011), and at extreme levels can become a clinically disordered experience leading to sexual dysfunction and requiring therapeutic attention (e.g., Everaerd & Dekker, 1982;Mccabe, 1992;Munjack, 1984;Nemetz, Craig, & Reith, 1978;White, Fichtenbaum, & Dollard, 1967). Sexual guilt has been implicated in decreased sexual drive and satisfaction and increased sexual dysfunction (Cado & Leitenberg, 1990;Darling, Davidson, & Passarello, 1992;Galbraith, 1969;Merrell, 2009;Morokoff, 1985;Nobre & Pinto-Gouveia, 2006;Woo, Brotto, & Gorzalka, 2011), and less sexual behavior including sexual intercourse (Love, Sloan, & Schmidt, 1976). Considering lower sexual frequency has been found to be related to higher rates of divorce (Yabiku & Gager, 2009) the presence of sexual guilt could create marriage instability.…”