Leonhardt, Nathan D., and Brian J. Willoughby. “Longitudinal links between pornography use, marital importance, and permissive sexuality during emerging adulthood.” Marriage & Family Review just-accepted (2017).
Nathan D. Leonhardt & Brian J. Willoughby
Marriage & Family Review, 14 Aug 2017
ABSTRACT
Limited research exists concerning pornography’s influence on emerging adult’s relationship trajectories, with no research examining how pornography use predicts emerging adults’ beliefs about marriage. The study includes cross-sectional results of 568 emerging adults and longitudinal results of 142 participants who were followed from the original sample. Regression analyses found that pornography use was cross-sectionally associated with a higher importance placed on sexual readiness before getting married and more permissive sexual attitudes. Longitudinal regression analyses showed that pornography use predicted lower marital centrality and more permissive sexual attitudes. These results suggest that pornography use is linked not only to emerging adults’ sexual scripts, but also may be influencing broader relationship scripts.
DISCUSSION
Although baseline associations revealed a significant association between pornography use and all dependent variables, after including the control variables, pornography use was only associated with sexual readiness criteria and sexual permissiveness. Age, gender, race, religiosity, and parents’ marital status were all significant controls for how pornography use was associated with different dependent variables.
Religiosity was a control that appeared to have a particularly strong mediating effect between pornography use and generalized marital beliefs. This suggests a strong selection effect between pornography use and marital beliefs where religious emerging adults were more likely to both avoid pornography and value marriage.
However, even with controls, association remained between pornography use and specific sexual scripts, including sexual scripts in relation to marriage via specific beliefs in the area of marital context, as shown through the importance of sexual readiness scale.
This new finding suggests that emerging adults who view pornography more frequently believe sexual readiness and sexual chemistry are a greater priority for marriage readiness than those that do not view pornography. Because pornography users place greater importance on sexual readiness and chemistry, these expectations may lead emerging adults to seek out multiple premarital committed and non-committed sexual partners, which may paradoxically lower emerging adults’ chances for experiencing some of the aforementioned positive marital outcomes
As with the cross-sectional data, the first step of the regression models revealed a significant relationship between pornography use and all the dependent variables, even when controlling for Time 1 views. However, after adding additional controls to the Time 1 views, pornography use was only significantly linked to changes in both marital centrality and permissive sexuality.
Again, as expected due to previous research (Braithwaite et al., 2015), pornography use was significantly linked to a more permissive sexual ethic. This adds empirical evidence to script theory, supporting the idea that pornography use has an influence on sexual ethics, not just an associational connection.
Because a more permissive sexual ethic appears to be connected to casual sexual behaviors (Braithwaite et al., 2015), including a higher number of sexual partners (Willoughby et al., 2014), pornography use may also lower chances for positive marital outcomes through its influence on permissive sexual ethics (Busby et al., 2010; Busby, Willoughby, & Carroll, 2013; Sassler et al., 2012).
That pornography use at time one failed to significantly predict changes in marital salience when the control variables were used, but did significantly predict a change in marital centrality is an intriguing finding. This suggests that while pornography use during emerging adulthood does not shift an emerging adult’s global view for importance of marriage, it is associated with a decreased relative importance assigned to one’s future marital role. Pornography use appears to
have greater influence on emerging adult’s views of marriage relative to other aspects in life, as opposed to influencing their views of the overall importance of the institution. Those who use pornography appear to retain the belief that marriage is important; however, they appear to start viewing marriage as being less important in comparison to other life priorities. This confirms previous research which has suggested that marital centrality and marital salience represent two distinct constructs that may trend in different directions during emerging adulthood (Willoughby, Medaris, James, & Bartholomew, 2015).
Despite limitations, the study shows that pornography use, marital beliefs, and sexually permissive attitudes are linked, with the longitudinal nature of the data suggesting pornography use has a directional influence on marital centrality over time. This has practical implications for educators who are preparing emerging adults for marriage, considering pornographic material may inform sexual scripts. Greater awareness of how pornographic content informs expectations for marriage, particularly sexuality in marriage, can help educators to provide information congruent with emerging adults’ aspirations for their marriage, particularly their sexual relationship within marriage.
Overall, pornography appears to have a subtle influence on the way people are thinking about sexuality and relationships more generally, which may carry over into a wider array of cultural values (Schumm, 2015). Together, sexual script theory, and marital paradigms theory provide the theoretical background and constructs needed to develop a more comprehensive understanding of pornography’s influence on marital beliefs and relational scripts. This can help inform future research and policy decisions concerning the regulation of pornography.
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