Study: Porn Use Does Not Cause Porn Addiction — Here’s What Does

A new scientific study has debunked the concept that porn viewing leads to so-called “porn addiction,” but that there is one factor that can, indeed, lead to problematic or out-of-control fixation on porn: religion. Or, as the article published earlier this month in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior refers to the issue, “Pornography Problems Due to Moral Incongruence.” “Moral incogruence,” according to the article, refers to “the experience of having one’s behaviors be inconsistent with one’s beliefs.” “We put forth a model of pornography problems due to moral incongruence,” the study’s authors write. “Within this model, we describe how pornography-related problems—particularly feelings of addiction to pornography—may be, in many cases, better construed as functions of discrepancies—moral incongruence—between pornography-related beliefs and pornography-related behaviors.” What does that mean in plain English? Fortunately, clinical psychologist David J. Ley published his more accessible interpretation of the new study in the popularized magazine Psychology Today this week.  “Porn use does not predict problems with porn,” Ley explained. “But religiosity does. ... Even though many people who grew up in religious, sexually conservative households, have strong negative feelings about pornography, many of those same people continue to use pornography. And then they feel guilty and ashamed of their behavior, and angry at themselves and their sexual desire to watch more porn.” The idea of “porn addiction” gained credence in the 1990s, Ley writes, as the explosion of the internet was thought to be creating an epidemic of online porn addition due to the sudden “Affordability, Anonymity and Accessibility” of adult material via the internet. But this then-new theory of alleged porn addiction was scientifically tested only one time—and that 2004 study, Ley reports, found that the three “A’s” had no correlation to excessive or problematic porn use. “BUT—what the Internet did, was put porn in the hands (and laps) of people who had been woefully unprepared to manage it, or their sexual desires,” Ley wrote in the Psychology Today article. “Religiosity is associated with a host of sexual difficulties, and now, porn-related problems can be added to that list.” The new study published in Archives of Sexual Behavior has taken another look at the issue, finding once again that there is no meaningful evidence that easy access to porn leads to “addiction” issues—except in highly religious people whose religious beliefs include a moral objection to porn. In fact, the best “predictor” that a porn user will report problems with “addiction” is “moral incongruence,” the study showed. “If the ideas of pornography addiction were true, then porn-related problems would go up, regardless of morality, as porn use goes up,” Ley wrote. “But the researchers didn’t find that. In fact, they cite numerous studies showing that even feeling like you struggle to control your porn use doesn’t actually predict more porn use." Photo by Colin/Wikimedia Commons