What does the overall body of research have to say on how porn affects sexual and relationship satisfaction? What about body contentment and self-esteem? Are the answers to these questions different for men and women? This meta-analysis explores these questions!
The study highlighted:
- Pornography Consumption and Satisfaction: a Meta-Analysis
Other studies mentioned include:
- Studies linking porn to lower sexual/relationship satisfaction for women
- Studies linking porn to lower body satisfaction and self-esteem
- Study showing female porn consumers watch more violent content than men.
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Your Brain on Porn has lots of other information on the relationship between pornography use and satisfaction. A key recent paper is Pornography and Sexual Dissatisfaction: The Role of Pornographic Arousal, Upward Pornographic Comparisons, and Preference for Pornographic Masturbation (2021). This study is the first to assess if conditioning one’s sexual arousal template to porn use is the mechanism that explains why greater porn use correlates with poorer sexual and relationship satisfaction. It does – for both men and women. This suggests porn use can result in preference for masturbation to porn over partnered sex.
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