But What’s Your Partner Up to? Associations Between Relationship Quality and Pornography Use Depend on Contextual Patterns of Use Within the Couple. Taylor Kohut et al. Front. Psychol., July 30 2021. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.661347
Abstract: It is commonly assumed that exposure to pornography harms relationships because pornography changes the way that individuals think, feel, and behave in problematic ways. In the current research, we contribute to a small but growing body of work that challenges this assumption by carefully scrutinizing the relational context of pornography use. In contrast to dominant theoretical explanations in this field, we argue that at least some of the apparent negative “impacts” of pornography use on relationship quality may reflect partner dissimilarity in pornography use behavior rather than the consequences of exposure to such materials. Moreover, we further examine a particular type of pornography use – shared use with a partner – which previous evidence suggests may be positively associated with relationship quality. To this end, we sought to test whether dyadic patterns of pornography use, and related attributes, were associated with sexual and relationship satisfaction in two cross-sectional (N1 = 200; N3 = 207) and two longitudinal (N2 = 77; N4 = 277) samples of heterosexual couples. Across these samples, we found consistent evidence that partners who watch pornography together report higher relationship and sexual satisfaction than partners who do not, and notably, this association was not moderated by gender. Independent of this association, we also found evidence of a similarity-dissimilarity effect, such that the solitary pornography use of one partner was negatively associated with their own relationship and sexual satisfaction, but only in cases where their romantic partners used little or no pornography alone. Further consideration of several correlates of pornography use established comparable patterns of results for dissimilarity in attitudes toward pornography, erotophobia-erotophilia, sexual preferences, and sex drive. Importantly, only dissimilarity in sex drive statistically accounted for dissimilarity in solitary pornography use, suggesting that differences in sex drive may be implicated in the associations between pornography use and relationship quality. These findings demonstrate that links between pornography use and relationship health are partially a function of different dyadic patterns of pornography use within couples and do not always suggest relational harm.
General Discussion
Building on previous research indicating positive correlations between pornography use and relationship functioning (Kohut et al., 2017b, 2018), the current work sought to determine if associations between pornography use and relationship and sexual satisfaction may vary as a function of different dyadic patterns of pornography use within adult relationships. Across three studies, we found consistent evidence that partners who watch pornography together report higher relationship and sexual satisfaction than partners who do not, and notably, this association was not moderated by gender. Independent of this association, we also found evidence of a similarity-dissimilarity effect, such that the solitary pornography use of one partner was negatively associated with their own relationship and sexual satisfaction, but only in cases where their romantic partners used little or no pornography alone8. Further, satisfaction measures tended to be highest among couples in which both partners either used pornography at a high frequency or did not use pornography at all. In probing potential mechanisms for the similarity-dissimilarity effect, we found that similarity-dissimilarity in sex drive, but not attitudes toward pornography, erotophobia-erotophilia, or sexual preferences may be implicated.
The most robust finding in the current analysis was that the frequency of shared pornography use was positively associated with both relationship and sexual satisfaction. These findings corroborate previous reports of similar associations in research that failed to control for similarity-dissimilarity in partners’ solitary pornography use (Bridges and Morokoff, 2011; Maddox et al., 2011; Willoughby and Leonhardt, 2020), and extend Kohut et al.’s (2018) findings that shared pornography use is associated with more open sexual communication and higher interpersonal closeness. Positive associations between shared pornography use and relationship functioning are difficult to explain with harm-focused exposure-based paradigms that draw heavily from objectification, social comparison, and script theories. Such findings, however, are quite consistent with descriptions of shared pornography use as a novel and exciting couples’ activity (Kohut et al., 2017b), as well as more general theories and evidence that link the experience of shared novel and exciting activities with relationship functioning (Aron et al., 1992, 2000; Reissman et al., 1993). Further experimental research in this vein should consider whether the introduction of (or increase in) shared pornography use can improve relationship and sexual satisfaction within couples to determine if causal claims are warranted.
While the results were less robust, it is more intriguing that similarity-dissimilarity in solitary pornography use was associated with sexual satisfaction and, to a lesser extent, relationship satisfaction. Across Studies 1, 3, and 4, we found consistent evidence indicating that the well-established negative association between pornography and sexual satisfaction was limited to cases where partners were very dissimilar in their solitary pornography use. We also found evidence that solitary pornography use was positively related to sexual and relationship satisfaction among couples in which both members frequently used pornography alone, but such effects were limited to Study 3. When considering these findings in conjunction with past research (Kohut et al., 2018), we are inclined to believe that the positive associations between solitary pornography use and relationship quality reported in Study 3 were a result of chance variation and will be unlikely to replicate in future research. Moreover, it is evident to us that dissimilarity in solitary pornography use is much more common than similarity in moderate to frequent solitary pornography use (Kohut et al., 2017a), at least with respect to the heterosexual couples that have been studied. Consequently, we are left to conclude that while solitary pornography use may typically be associated with poor relationship functioning within most heterosexual romantic couples (Wright et al., 2017), there exist at least some cases where it is not. With respect to Holbert and Park’s (2020) classification of interaction types, the interaction between heterosexual couple members’ solitary pornography use would best be described as a form of contingent moderation with a divergent negative pattern.
Such findings are nevertheless important for a number of reasons. First, if one takes the position that pornography causes relationships to deteriorate then these findings indicate important boundary conditions that limit pornography’s harmful effects to relationships with particular patterns of dissimilar pornography use. Second, these results accord nicely with well-established findings that similarity-dissimilarity in attitudes, personality, and sexual preferences are related to enhanced attraction and relationship functioning (Smith et al., 1993; Purnine and Carey, 1999; Montoya and Horton, 2013), which implies that mechanisms that are not premised on the impact of exposure to sexual content may be responsible for at least some of the purported “harms” of pornography. Finally, the lack of evidence indicating that the similarity-dissimilarity effects were further moderated by gender reinforces the possibility that previously reported gender differences in the associations between pornography use and relationship functioning (Wright et al., 2017) actually represent similarity-dissimilarity effects, rather than gender-specific responses to sexual media. While intriguing, this last speculation can only be tested conclusively with large dyadic samples of male and female same-sex relationships. Nevertheless, the current results call into question the utility of further theorizing about male- and female-specific relationship “consequences” of exposure to sexual media until such research can be conducted.
Our efforts to probe potential mechanisms for the associations between similarity-dissimilarity in solitary pornography use and relationship and sexual satisfaction corroborated previous reports that similarity-dissimilarity in attitudes (Montoya and Horton, 2013), erotophobia-erotophilia (Smith et al., 1993), sexual preferences (Purnine and Carey, 1999), and sex drive (Davies et al., 1999; Mark, 2015) are related to relationship functioning. Of particular relevance to the current analysis, similarity-dissimilarity in sex drive, but not attitudes toward one’s own pornography use, attitudes toward a partner’s pornography use, erotophobia-erotophilia, or sexual preferences, statistically accounted for similarity-dissimilarity effects of solitary pornography use. Specifically, in Study 4, once couple differences in similarity-dissimilarity in sex drive were controlled for, patterns of solitary pornography use within couples were unrelated to their sexual satisfaction. In this case, neither similarity-dissimilarity in pornography use nor sex-drive “dominated” the statistical model as such associations effectively canceled each other out. Independent of the issue of similarity-dissimilarity, both partners’ levels of sex drive in this model, but not their levels of solitary pornography use, were positively associated with sexual satisfaction. This suggests the presence of connections between sex-drive and sexual satisfaction, that are independent of solitary pornography use. It is also notable that controlling for similarity-dissimilarity in sex-drive did not interfere with the association between shared pornography use and sexual satisfaction. We believe that this latter finding reinforces the notion that the relationship correlates of shared pornography use and similarity-dissimilarity in solitary pornography use operate through different causal pathways.
The statistical overlap between similarity-dissimilarity in solitary pornography use and sex drive may be especially notable because similarity-dissimilarity in solitary pornography use was more reliably connected to sexual rather than relationship satisfaction, despite the high correlations between these two constructs. In this connection it is also worth noting that past research has indicated that pornography use has a modestly stronger association with sexual satisfaction than relationship satisfaction (Wright et al., 2017). While very speculative, such findings coupled with our own incline us to believe that at least some of the association between pornography use and relationship satisfaction may be a downstream consequence of a more proximal relationship between pornography use and sexual satisfaction, rather than vice versa. If that is the case then ameliorating sexual dissatisfaction among couples who are dissimilar in solitary pornography use by directly addressing their sexual concerns related to pornography or by tackling factors like dissimilarity in sex drive might have further salutary effects on other aspects of their relationship quality (e.g., relationship satisfaction, interpersonal closeness, commitment, etc.).
The exact nature of the relationship between solitary pornography use and sexual satisfaction remains an open question. The ACE perspective, with its emphasis on antecedent conditions and potentially spurious associations, would suggest that partner discrepancies in sex drive – which are common in heterosexual relationships (Ellison, 2002) – may precipitate and maintain dissimilarities in solitary pornography use, and potentially independent from that, fuel sexual dissatisfaction in relationships. In other words, the similarity-dissimilarity effects of solitary pornography use may have little or no impact on sexual satisfaction and may simply represent a “marker” of the causal relationship between dissimilarity in sex-drive and sexual satisfaction. However, other views would stress the possibility that our findings represent evidence that sex drive mediates the relationship between pornography use and sexual satisfaction (e.g., Wright, 2021b). That is, solitary pornography use may fundamentally increase users’ sex drives, creating imbalances in desire in the relationship, which ultimately lead to decreased sexual satisfaction for both partners. The results of Study 4 are equally consistent with both possibilities, though we would caution somewhat against the latter view. Pornography clearly induces sexual arousal in many people, but compelling data concerning pornography-induced long-term changes in people’s general levels of sexual desire are scarce. The only relevant data that we are aware of indicates that perceived increases in sex drive stemming from pornography use are not particularly common and are about equally balanced by reports that pornography use decreases sexual interests (Grov et al., 2011; Kohut et al., 2017b). Regardless, assuming our pattern of findings with respect to sex-drive are robust and replicate, further work seeking to understand the role of sex drive in the associations between solitary pornography use and sexual satisfaction will need to consider experimental designs that attempt to manipulate both sex drive and solitary pornography use independently and follow couples over time.
Limitations
As is typically the case, the implications of this work are constrained by several important limitations. First, while we have speculated about several potential causal paths that could explain the associations between pornography use and relationship quality, these possibilities cannot be adequately tested with the current studies. We would also like to note that while our causal speculations are premised in part on research involving the experimental manipulation of perceived similarity and the introduction of shared novel activities among couples, we are quite open to the possibility that we are wrong, and other causal arrangements of the relevant constructs provide better explanations. Second, although one of these studies employed a quota sampling approach to approximately match the distribution of age and political affiliation of married American women, the remaining studies relied on convenience samples of Americans, limiting the generalizability of the current findings. Third, none of the current studies was expressly designed to examine the hypotheses of interest. Had they been, design elements, particularly the inclusion and operationalization of specific measures, would have been more consistent across studies. Relatedly, the particular operationalizations of pornography use employed in these studies may be suspect. The measure employed in Study 4 was conceptually broader than the measures used in Study’s 1 and 3 as it included “sexually charged” situations like visiting a strip-club and sex chatting, which are explicitly excluded in the other studies. While this is a poor defense, their currently exists no thoroughly validated measure of pornography use, nor any consensus on the best conceptual and operational definitions of this construct (Short et al., 2012; Kohut, 2014; Kohut et al., 2020). Given both the single-item assessments of pornography use and their different operationalizations across studies, it is at least promising that similar patterns of results emerged across our studies. Finally, while we made efforts to register all analytic plans before conducting the analyses, only Study 3 pre-registered these analyses before the data had been examined in any respect. In all other occasions, we had indications that similarity-dissimilarity effects for solitary pornography use emerged when different, yet closely related variables or models were tested. As a consequence, we would recommend that readers interpret the results of Studies 1, 2, and 4 as corroborative exploratory evidence for a pattern of results we confirmed in Study 3.
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