Pornography – a supernormal stimulus of the modern age. A correlation study about problematic pornography consumption and personal self-concept.

Abstract

Sometimes called the drug of the new millennium, pornography with its intensity, privacy and availability, has all the conditions for being problematic and even addictive. The purpose of this study was to investigate problematic pornography consumption (PPC) and how it might be connected to self-concept. In total 248 participants took part in the study, with 130 being men and 118 being women. The age span was between 18 and 63, but 87% of the participants were between 20–30 years of age. A cross-sectional design with mediator analyses was used to explore the correlation between PPC and self-concept and to see if guilt and/or general anxiety mediated the correlation. For women the results showed a significant correlation between PPC and self-concept and for men there was significance when guilt was accounted for, but not when general anxiety was accounted for. No correlation was found for the total sample and PPC was higher among men and general anxiety was higher among women. The conclusion is that PPC and self-concept show signs of correlation, but that neither general anxiety nor guilt were good mediators. Furthermore, the correlation is seen as an important aspect for future research surrounding pornography as a phenomenon.