Self-reported Addiction to Pornography in a Nationally Representative Sample: The Role of Religiousness and Morality

Grubbs, Joshua, Shane W. Kraus, and Samuel Perry. 2018. “Self-reported Addiction to Pornography in a Nationally Representative Sample: The Role of Religiousness and Morality.” PsyArXiv. June 29. doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/M94NK

Abstract

Background and Aims: Despite controversies regarding its existence as a legitimate mental health condition, self-reported pornography addiction is known to occur regularly. In the United States, prior works using various sampling techniques, such as undergraduate samples and online convenience samples, have consistently demonstrated that a number of pornography users report feeling dysregulated or out of control in their use. Even so, there has been very little work in U.S. nationally representative samples to examine self-reported pornography addiction.

Methods: The present study sought to examine self-reported pornography addiction in a U.S. nationally representative sample of adult internet users (N=2,075).

Results:  Results indicated that the majority of the sample had viewed pornography within their lifetimes (n = 1,466), with just over half reporting some use in the past year (n = 1,056).  Moreover, roughly 11% of men and 3% of women reported some agreement with feelings of pornography addiction. Across all participants, such feelings were most strongly associated with male gender, younger age, greater religiousness, greater moral incongruence regarding pornography use, and greater use of pornography.

Discussion and Conclusions: Collectively, these findings are consistent with prior works that have noted that self-reported pornography addiction is a complex phenomenon that is predicted by both objective behavior and subjective moral evaluations of that behavior.