If you’ve been following the “problematic porn use” (PPU) field, you may be aware of a campaign by allies of the porn industry to persuade the public that “PPU is merely religious shame dressed up as addiction anxiety.” The late Gary Wilson wrote about this masterful “red herring”.
Initially this campaign had some (undeserved) success, aided by the porn industry and its academic allies’ skillful promotion. Slowly, however, researchers are beginning to ask better questions. Also, reviewers have allowed some research that does not support the concept to pass their review. (In general, however, by the time research has been edited by reviewers who favor “moral incongruence,” it sounds like the concept is alive and well, regardless of the findings of the researchers, as in this recent example.)
So, it can be difficult to get a handle on the current status of the “moral incongruence” debate. To help visitors with questioning minds, here’s an exchange between a current researcher in the field and a woman asking about the widely disseminated porn-positive narrative (“It’s all “moral incongruence.”):
Woman:
A lot of sexologists claim: ‘Porn is part of a healthy sex life; there is no evidence that today’s immersive, online porn can ever lead to harms in young men, outside of those harms induced by religiously-based shame.’
I want to know to what extent is it reasonable to be skeptical of that view for some percentage of users. And I’d love to know what research you believe is the best out there that indicates skepticism toward the above proposition is appropriate.
Researcher’s reply (emphasis supplied by YBOP):
I think some broader context on moral incongruence (MI) is required to place the recent research into perspective.
Firstly, the assertion that moral/religious-based dissonance is the primary explanation for PPU is both reductionistic and now outdated. Ten years ago, the moral incongruence (MI) counterpoint surged into the spotlight, which essentially argued that consuming pornography despite moral disapproval of the behaviour (i.e., moral incongruence) explained peoples’ self-perceived addiction to pornography…. that “PPU is simply moral incongruence”. This was a working hypothesis that was – in my view – concerningly over-interpreted.
The biggest issue was the assumption that PPU/addiction-like features and moral incongruence are competing processes. However, such research only tested whether these two constructs move together… rather than testing whether MI and PPU can emerge in different combinations across individuals. The latter is a far more appropriate test, as it can identify:
1) whether the two constructs are actually the same thing or not, and
2) whether people can reasonably be bundled into a ‘one-size-fits-all’ profile.
Researchers began to call this out around 2020, which was an important inflection point. Among others, Vaillancourt-Morel & Bergeron (2019; https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-018-1292-6), Kraus & Sweeney (2019; https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-018-1301-9), and Brand et al. (2019; https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-018-1293-5), theorised that:
1) PPU and MI are not the same thing, such that people can score high on one but not the other, and
2) prior research made too many untested assumptions that MI itself is simply due to religious-based shame.
Since then, ~4 data-driven studies have essentially confirmed the above pushback:
1) Ince et al. (2025; doi: 10.1556/2006.2025.00022)
This study tested whether individuals fit into different profiles based on their PPU and/or MI. Among two samples of male pornography users (total N~2,300), ~20% of respondents were classified into one of three “at risk” profiles:
– ‘PPU only’: High PPU, low MI (6-10%)
– ‘MI-only’***: Low PPU, high MI (4-8%)
– ‘PPU + MI’: High on both PPU and MI (6-8%)
*** Intriguingly, the ‘MI-only’ group (i.e., no PPU) actually had better mental health (psychological distress and desire for treatment) compared to the other two other groups. Said differently, higher distress and feeling the need for professional treatment only emerged among the groups with PPU.
This indicates that PPU and MI are evidently not the same thing, and MI on its own does not account for elevated psychological distress (which is a universal indicator of poor mental health).
2) Bothe et al. (2025; doi: 10.1556/2006.2024.00054):
A similar approach to the above but on a much larger scale (N~66,000 across 42 countries). They characterised ~30% of individuals as ‘at risk’ across two groups:
– ‘PPU only’: High PPU, low MI (19.8%)
– ‘PPU + some MI’***: High PPU, moderate-at-best MI (11.2%)
*** This group had quite low levels of MI: on a 1-7 scale, their average was only 2.5. As a comparison, the ‘MI-only’ group in the Ince et al. study (above) scored 5-5.50 (also out of 7).
This again challenges the idea that PPU is simply MI.
3) Jiang et al. (2022; https://doi.
org/10.1556/2006.2022.00065.) and 4) Chen et al. (2022; https://doi.org/10.1037/adb0000714.):
– Both studies were from Chinese samples recruited from online PPU recovery forums. Again, the results showed that PPU and MI are independent constructs. However, even the groups characterized by MI (i.e., low PPU) had modest levels of moral incongruence (mean score ~4-4.5 out of 7). If MI were to simply account for self-reported PPU, then the average score for moral disapproval should surely be higher than the midpoint of the scale.
5) Hoagland et al. (2023; https://doi.org/10.1080/0092623X.2023.2186992)
This is a key study that actually asked people to explain why they believed pornography use to be morally wrong (US-based, N = 1,020, only individuals who reported moral disapproval in the first place). Numbers here represent the frequency (percentage) – i.e., how often each theme was endorsed
– Religiosity: 29.8
– Concerns of abuse (e.g., performer exploitation): 26.9
– Feminism portrayal: 20.3
– Relationships/family (e.g., marriage impact): 19.1
– Misc (e.g., a “waste of time”): 16.4
– Health impacts for the viewer (sexual health, addiction, etc): ~5-8
Clearly, these results show that MI cannot be reduced to religious shame, although it is undoubtedly relevant for some individuals. This is concerning given that the MI debate is so often interpreted as a problem of religiosity.