How Porn Changes the Brain

Reward System, Addiction, and Escalating Behaviours

  • 52 neurological studies have been done on porn users & sex addicts. Every study to date supports the porn addiction model.
  • “Within the present study, we set out to investigate the neural correlates associated with frequent—not necessarily addictive—pornography use in a healthy population to explore whether this common behavior is associated with the structure and function of certain brain regions.”
  • This Max Planck Institute fMRI study reported 3 neurological findings correlating with higher levels of porn use: (1) less reward system grey matter (dorsal striatum), (2) less reward circuit activation while briefly viewing sexual photos, (3) poorer functional connectivity between the dorsal striatum and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The researchers interpreted the 3 findings as an indication of the effects of longer-term porn exposure.
  • We show experimentally what is observed clinically that Compulsive Sexual Behavior is characterized by novelty-seeking, conditioning and habituation to sexual stimuli in males.
  • “It’s not clear what triggers sex addiction in the first place and it is likely that some people are more pre-disposed to the addiction than others, but the seemingly endless supply of novel sexual images available online helps feed their addiction, making it more and more difficult to escape.”
  • The study reported tolerance/habituation, escalation of use, needing more extreme genres to be sexually aroused, withdrawal symptoms when quitting, porn-induced sexual problems, porn addiction, and more.
  • The most common self-perceived adverse​ effects of pornography use included: the need for longer stimulation (12.0%) and more sexual stimuli​ (17.6%) to reach orgasm, and a decrease in sexual satisfaction (24.5%)
  • Switching to a novel genre of explicit material (46.0%), use of materials that do not​ match sexual orientation (60.9%) and need to use more extreme (violent) material (32.0%)
  • Among those surveyed who declared themselves to be current pornography consumers (n = 4260), 51.0% admitted to making at least one attempt to give up using it with no difference in the frequency of these attempts between males and females. 72.2% of those attempting to quit pornography use indicated the experience of at least one associated effect, and the most frequently observed included erotic dreams (53.5%), irritability (26.4%), attention disturbance (26.0%), and sense of loneliness (22.2%) (Table 2).
  • With some exceptions, none of personality traits, which were self-reported in this study, differentiated the studied parameters of pornography. These findings support the notion that access and exposure to pornography are presently issues too broad to specify any particular psychosocial characteristics of its users. However, an interesting observation was made regarding consumers who reported a need to view increasingly extreme pornographic content. As shown, frequent use of explicit material may potentially be associated with desensitization leading to a need to view more extreme content to reach similar sexual arousal.

Impotence and Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction (PIED)

  • Over 40 studies linking porn use or porn addiction to sexual problems and lower arousal in response to sexual stimuli or partnered sex. The first 7 studies in the list demonstrate causation.
  • This review (1) considers data from multiple domains, e.g., clinical, biological (addiction/urology), psychological (sexual conditioning), sociological; and (2) presents a series of clinical reports, all with the aim of proposing a possible direction for future research of this phenomenon. Alterations to the brain’s motivational system are explored as a possible etiology underlying pornography-related sexual dysfunctions.
  • This review also considers evidence that Internet pornography’s unique properties (limitless novelty, potential for easy escalation to more extreme material, video format, etc.) may be potent enough to condition sexual arousal to aspects of Internet pornography use that do not readily transition to real-life partners, such that sex with desired partners may not register as meeting expectations and arousal declines. Clinical reports suggest that terminating Internet pornography use is sometimes sufficient to reverse negative effects, underscoring the need for extensive investigation using methodologies that have subjects remove the variable of Internet pornography use.
  • Additional multiple regression analyses indicated that the following characteristics are associated with problematic use of OSAs: (a) partnered-arousal activities (e.g., sex chat) and solitary-arousal activities (e.g., pornography); (b) anonymous fantasizing and mood regulation motives; and (c) higher sexual desire, lower overall sexual satisfaction, and lower erectile function.

Mental Health and Cognitive Functioning

  • Two lists of studies, one associating porn use with negative emotional and wellbeing, and the other on cognitive functioning.
  • Using data from the Youth Internet Safety Survey, a nationally representative, cross-sectional telephone survey of 1501 children and adolescents (ages 10-17 years), characteristics associated with self-reported pornography seeking behavior, both on the Internet and using traditional methods (e.g., magazines), are identified.
  • Those who report intentional exposure to pornography, irrespective of source, are significantly more likely to cross-sectionally report delinquent behavior and substance use in the previous year. Further, online seekers versus offline seekers are more likely to report clinical features associated with depression and lower levels of emotional bonding with their caregiver.
  • The focus of this study are the potential relationships between sexually explicite media behaviours (SEMB, i.e. pornography) and non-sexual mental and physical health characteristics.
  • A sample of 559 Seattle-Tacoma Internet-using adults was surveyed in 2006. Multivariate general linear models parameterized in a SEMB by respondent gender (2 × 2) factorial design were computed incorporating adjustments for several demographics.
  • “After adjusting for demographics, Pornography (SEMB) users, compared to nonusers, reported greater depressive symptoms, poorer quality of life, more mental- and physical-health diminished days, and lower health status.”
  • Path analyses revealed that men’s frequency of pornography use was (a) positively linked to muscularity and body fat dissatisfaction indirectly through internalization of the mesomorphic ideal, (b) negatively linked to body appreciation directly and indirectly through body monitoring, (c) positively linked to negative affect indirectly through romantic attachment anxiety and avoidance, and (d) negatively linked to positive affect indirectly through relationship attachment anxiety and avoidance.
  • In two studies exposure to visual sexual stimuli resulted in: 1) greater delayed discounting (inability to delay gratification), 2) greater inclination to engage in cyber-delinquency, 3) greater inclination to purchase counterfeit goods & hack someone’s Facebook account. Taken together this indicates that porn use increases impulsivity and may reduce certain executive functions (self-control, judgment, foreseeing consequences, impulse control). 
  • Excerpt: “These findings provide insight into a strategy for reducing men’s involvement in cyber delinquency; that is, through less exposure to sexual stimuli and promotion of delayed gratification. The current results suggest that the high availability of sexual stimuli in cyberspace may be more closely associated with men’s cyber-delinquent behavior than previously thought.”
  • Greater porn use was correlated with higher levels of depression, even after controlling for all sorts of variables, including perceptions of porn. Excerpts:
  • Therefore, even after controlling for a variety of demographic factors, impulsivity, pornography acceptance, and the general perception of sexual content as pornographic, the accumulated total viewing of sexual content was still significantly linked to higher levels of depressive symptoms as found in previous studies.
  • Results suggested that viewing sexual material that is not considered pornography was consistently associated with more depressive symptoms. In other words, when individuals tended to regularly view images of women without any clothing and did not perceive this as pornography, they were more likely to report higher depressive symptoms. Conversely, when individuals reported not viewing such images and believed such images to be pornographic, reports of depressive symptoms tended to be lower.

Porn In Relationships

Lower Sexual/Romantic Satisfaction

  • Over 75 studies linking porn use to lower relationship or sexual satisfaction. As far as we know all studies involving males have reported more porn use linked to poorer sexual or relationship satisfaction.
  • This study investigated associations between viewing sexually-explicit material (SEM) and relationship functioning in a random sample of 1291 unmarried individuals in romantic relationships. More men (76.8%) than women (31.6%) reported that they viewed SEM on their own, but nearly half of both men and women reported sometimes viewing SEM with their partner (44.8%).
  • Individuals who never viewed SEM reported higher relationship quality on all indices than those who viewed SEM alone. Those who viewed SEM only with their partners reported more dedication and higher sexual satisfaction than those who viewed SEM alone. The only difference between those who never viewed SEM and those who viewed it only with their partners was that those who never viewed it had lower rates of infidelity.
  • Willoughby, B. J., Carroll, J. S., Busby, D. M., & Brown, C. (2016). Differences in pornography use among couples: Associations with satisfaction, stability, and relationship processes. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 45, 145-148, doi: 10.1007/s10508-015-0562-9
  • The present study utilized a sample of 1755 adult couples in heterosexual romantic relationships to examine how different patterns of pornography use between romantic partners may be associated with relationship outcomes.
  • Results suggested that greater discrepancies between partners in pornography use were related to less relationship satisfaction, less stability, less positive communication, and more relational aggression. Mediation analyses suggested that greater pornography use discrepancies were primarily associated with elevated levels of male relational aggression, lower female sexual desire, and less positive communication for both partners which then predicted lower relational satisfaction and stability for both partners.
  • Data were taken from 30 nationally-representative surveys, which together included 31 measures of relationship quality: 1973-2018 General Social Surveys (1 repeated measure); 2006 Portraits of American Life Study (13 measures); 2012 New Family Structures Study (12 measures); and 2014 Relationships in America Survey (5 measures). This allowed for 57 independent tests examining the association between pornography use and relationship outcomes for married Americans and 29 independent tests for unmarried Americans.
  • For married and unmarried Americans alike, pornography use was either unassociated or negatively associated with nearly all relationship outcomes. Significant associations were mostly small in magnitude. Conversely, except for one unclear exception, pornography use was never positively associated with relationship quality. Associations were only occasionally moderated by gender, but in inconsistent directions. While this study makes no claims about causality, findings clearly affirmed that, in instances where viewing pornography is associated with relationship quality at all, it is nearly always a signal of poorer relationship quality, for men and women.

Effects on Marriage

  • We used data on 20,000 ever-married adults in the General Social Survey to examine the relationship between watching pornographic films and various measures of marital well-being. We found that adults who had watched an X-rated movie in the past year were more likely to be divorced, more likely to have had an extramarital affair, and less likely to report being happy with their marriage or happy overall. We also found that, for men, pornography use reduced the positive relationship between frequency of sex and happiness. Finally, we found that the negative relationship between pornography use and marital well-being has, if anything, grown stronger over time, during a period in which pornography has become both more explicit and more easily available.
  • The study used nationally representative General Social Survey panel data collected from thousands of American adults. Respondents were interviewed three times about their pornography use and marital status — every two years from 2006-2010, 2008-2012, or 2010-2014.
  • Beginning pornography use between survey waves nearly doubled one’s likelihood of being divorced by the next survey period, from 6 percent to 11 percent, and nearly tripled it for women, from 6 percent to 16 percent. Our results suggest that viewing pornography, under certain social conditions, may have negative effects on marital stability.
  • Additionally, the researchers found that respondents’ initially reported level of marital happiness played an important role in determining the magnitude of pornography’s association with the probability of divorce. Among people who reported they were “very happy” in their marriage in the first survey wave, beginning pornography viewership before the next survey was associated with a noteworthy increase — from 3 percent to 12 percent — in the likelihood of getting divorced by the time of that next survey.

Porn’s Societal Impact

This part of the document will contain triggers for some including: mentions of sexual violence, human trafficking, and humiliation. Many readers may find this graphically disturbing.

Porn’s Effects on People’s Beliefs and Sexual Aggression

“Pornography, by its very nature, is an equal opportunity toxin.… The damage is both in the area of beliefs and behaviors. The belief damage may include Pornography Distortion [and] Permission-Giving Beliefs.… The behavioral damage includes … illegal behaviors…. Pornography Distortion is a set of beliefs based in pornographic imagery, sent to the viewer while they are aroused and reinforced by the orgasm. An example of Pornography Distortion would include beliefs such as ‘Sex is not about intimacy, procreation, or marriage. Sex is about predatory self-gratification….’ Permission-Giving Beliefs are a set of beliefs that imply that my behavior is normal, acceptable, common and/or that my behavior doesn’t hurt anyone .… Examples would include ‘All men go to prostitutes,’ …. Those who use pornography have also been shown to be more likely to engage in illegal behavior as well. Research indicates, and my clinical experience supports, that those who use pornography are more likely to go to prostitutes.”

- Dr. Mary Anne Layden

  • “The large body of research on pornography reveals that it functions as a teacher of, a permission-giver for, and a trigger of many negative behaviors and attitudes that can severely damage not only the users but many others, including strangers. The damage is seen in men, women, and children, and in both married and single adults. It involves pathological behaviors, illegal behaviors, and some behaviors that are both illegal and pathological. Pornography is an equal opportunity and very lethal toxin.”
  • Excerpt: “The goal of this review was to synthesize empirical investigations testing effects of media sexualization. The focus was on research published in peer-reviewed, English-language journals between 1995 and 2015. A total of 109 publications that contained 135 studies were reviewed. The findings provided consistent evidence that both laboratory exposure and regular, everyday exposure to this content are directly associated with a range of consequences, including higher levels of body dissatisfaction, greater self-objectification, greater support of sexist beliefs and of adversarial sexual beliefs, and greater tolerance of sexual violence toward women. Moreover, experimental exposure to this content leads both women and men to have a diminished view of women’s competence, morality, and humanity.
  • 22 studies from 7 different countries were analyzed. Consumption was associated with sexual aggression in the United States and internationally, among males and females, and in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Associations were stronger for verbal than physical sexual aggression, although both were significant. The general pattern of results suggested that violent content may be an exacerbating factor.
  • This review article looked at 20 studies and found that viewing pornography influences the sexual attitudes and behaviors among teens.
  • "The aim of this study was to provide a narrative review of the longitudinal studies focusing on the effects of sexually explicit material use on adolescents. A number of direct associations between sexually explicit material and adolescents' attitudes, beliefs and behaviors were reported in the studies. Sexually explicit material seemed to affect several sexuality-related attitudes, gender-related stereotypical beliefs, likelihood of having sexual intercourse and sexually aggressive behavior."
  • Rape has been steadily increaseing from 2014 to 2016
  • The FBI uses a revised definition of rape as well as their legacy definition. Cases of rape have increased for both definitions.
  • “There were an estimated 95,730 rapes (legacy definition) reported to law enforcement in 2016. This estimate was 4.9 percent higher than the 2015 estimate, 12.4 percent higher than the 2012 estimate, and 3.9 percent higher than the 2007 estimate. (See Tables 1 and 1A.)”
  • In the UK, there were 138,045 sex offenses, up 23%, in the 12 months preceding September, 2017.
  • This study addresses how widespread the practice of undercounting rape is in police departments across the country. Because identifying fraudulent and incorrect data is essentially the task of distinguishing highly unusual data patterns, I apply a statistical outlier detection technique to determine which jurisdictions have substantial anomalies in their data. Using this novel method to determine if other municipalities likely failed to report the true number of rape complaints made, I find significant undercounting of rape incidents by police departments across the country. The results indicate that approximately 22% of the 210 studied police departments responsible for populations of at least 100,000 persons have substantial statistical irregularities in their rape data indicating considerable undercounting from 1995 to 2012.
  • Notably, the number of undercounting jurisdictions has increased by over 61% during the eighteen years studied. Correcting the data to remove police undercounting by imputing data from highly correlated murder rates, the study conservatively estimates that 796,213 to 1,145,309 complaints of forcible vaginal rapes of female victims nationwide disappeared from the official records from 1995 to 2012. Further, the corrected data reveal that the study period includes fifteen to eighteen of the highest rates of rape since tracking of the data began in 1930. Instead of experiencing the widely reported “great decline” in rape, America is in the midst of a hidden rape crisis.

Porn Industry’s Connection to Sex Trafficking and Violence

Disclaimer: I think this section does help to indicate the problems of exploitation in the industry. However, as of 8/9/2020, I have my doubts about policies that aim to reduce or eliminate the demand for sexual exploitation. Prostitution and the sex industry are very broad topics that, while porn is a part of, only scratches 10% the surface. In fact I feel like after researching, I have at least another 10 questions on it that may lead to future research. There's a lot more to learn, the discussion doesn't end here.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) defines “severe forms of trafficking in persons” as; (a) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age; or (b) the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.

“It’s so easy to think when you’re watching porn that you’re no way a part of the problem, that you’re just watching the entertainment that is available for everybody… Each and every viewer feeds demand.” - Cordilia Anderson

“Porn is prostitution on screen.” “The traffickers are the same, the pimps are the same, the victims are the same.”  - Taina Bien-Aime

“There’s not porn over here, prostitution over here, and trafficking over here. They’re all interlinked.” Melissa Farley PHD

“We know that trafficking is increasing, which means demand is increasing. This means that men are increasingly willing to have sex with women who are being controlled and abused by pimps and traffickers. There are only two conclusions here: That men are naturally willing to do this to women, or that they are being socialized by the culture to lose all empathy for women. I refuse to accept that men are born rapists, porn users, or [sex buyers].” - Dr. Gail Dines President and CEO of Culture Reframed

  • Human Trafficking earns about $150 billion dollars per year. $99 billion comes from commercial sexual exploitation (AKA Porn)
  • 49% of sexually exploited women said that pornography was made of them while they were being sold for sex.
  • New research provides evidence that johns show pornography to prostituted women to illustrate the sexual activity they want to participate in or observe.46 Other research demonstrates that pimps and traffickers use pornography to instruct and desensitize their victims.47 The frequency of pornography use has also been found to correlate with frequency of purchasing sex.48
  • A study regarding the sexual abuse of prostituted women discovered that “Out of … 193 cases of rape, 24% mentioned allusions to pornographic material on the part of the rapist… the assailant referred to pornographic materials he had seen or read and then insisted that the victims not only enjoyed rape but also extreme violence.56”
  • The National Human Trafficking Hotline listed the top venues in 2018 where sex trafficking occurred. In order, they included: illicit massage/spa business, residence-based commercial sex, hotel/motel-based, pornography, and online ads.
  • Of the 304 scenes analyzed, 88.2% contained physical aggression, principally spanking, gagging, and slapping, while 48.7% of scenes contained verbal aggression, primarily name-calling. Perpetrators of aggression were usually male, whereas targets of aggression were overwhelmingly female. Targets most often showed pleasure or responded neutrally to the aggression.
  • This article considers the role of humiliation in contemporary pornography, arguing that it constitutes a severe form of harm to many female pornography performers. It further contends that the apparently consensual nature of much humiliating pornography exacerbates its harm to the humiliated performers.
  • “In discussions about pornography, well-meaning people often aver that, however distasteful it may be, we must accept pornography so long as it depicts only consenting adults. That is, the absence of consent is assumed to demarcate the boundaries of the harmful and unacceptable. My analysis here, however, points to the damaging poverty of this approach. Images of women accepting and even welcoming their own debasement and humiliation are profoundly destructive, not only for the particular women so depicted, but for women generally. After all, pornography purports to reveal the down-and-dirty truth—not about men, or capitalism, or patriarchy, but about women, who we are and what we are for.”

Homophobia, Transphobia, and Racism

I’m pretty sure this part should be pretty obvious. (i.e. lesbianism being catered to cis men, the slur “tranny” is a category on PH, and 90% of cuckold porn in depicting black men.) Regardless, this part is still pretty empty pls help :(

  • Racism and sexism were examined in interracial (Black/White) X‐rated pornography videocassettes. Five female coders coded 476 characters in the sexually explicit scenes in 54 videos. Characters were coded on aggregate measures of physical and verbal aggression, inequality cues, racial cues, and intimacy cues, as well as other specific indices. Sexism was demonstrated in the unidirectional aggression by men toward women. Racism was demonstrated in the lower status of Black actors and the presence of racial stereotypes. Racism appeared to be expressed somewhat differently by sex, and sexism somewhat differently by race. For example, Black women were the targets of more acts of aggression than were White women, and Black men showed fewer intimate behaviors than did White men. More aggression was found in cross‐race sexual interactions than in same‐race sexual interactions. These findings suggest that pornography is racist as well as sexist.
  • Study concludes that pornography reinforces harmful stereotypes for people of colour. Black men are often portrayed as perpetrators of aggression, while Black women are more often targets of aggression. Black couples are more often portrayed as aggressive and lacking intimacy as well.

Miscellaneous

  • Cambridge looked at the association between sexual activity and prostate cancer risk in younger men diagnosed at 60 years or younger.
  • Unlike most other masturbation prostate cancer studies, this study isolated different types of sexual activity (masturbation, intercourse, overall)
  • There was no association between intercourse and prostate cancer
  • The results of this correlative study saw that "frequent masturbation activity was a marker for increased risk in the 20s and 30s but appeared to be associated with a decreased risk in the 50s." However, the marker of decreased risk for participants in their 50's could be explained by reverse causation.
  • A meta study summarizes the published literature (16 studies pre-2015) and examines the contemporary evidence for relations between masturbation practice and prostate cancer (PCa) risk.
  • Exerpt - "Findings included relations among masturbation, ejaculation frequency, and age range as individual factors of PCa risk. No universally accepted themes were identified across the study sample. Throughout the sample, there was insufficient agreement in survey design and data reporting. Potential avenues for new research include frequency of ejaculation and age range as covarying factors that could lead to more definitive statements about masturbation practice and PCa risk."
  • A study done on rats saw that after a certain threshold of ejaculations, scientists observed sexual inhibition, loss of the anti-anxiety benefits of sex, and “drug hypersensitivity,” in the rats which is also observed after repeated doses of drugs of abuse.
  • This review provides an overview of studies examining potential health benefits of various sexual activities, with a focus on the effects of different sexual activities.
  • A wide range of better psychological and physiological health indices are associated specifically with penile–vaginal intercourse. Other sexual activities have weaker, no, or (in the cases of masturbation and anal intercourse) inverse associations with health indices. Condom use appears to impair some benefits of penile–vaginal intercourse (note from author of document and not the study: please use protection). Only a few of the research designs allow for causal inferences.

Agnotology and Propaganda

5 qualities of propaganda

  • Dominating with pervasive and non-stop messaging
  • Delegitimizing and demonizing any opposition
  • Framing the conversation favourably to only one view
  • Finessing the truth in various other ways (decontextualizing)
  • Bypassing Rational Discourse by invoking darker passions (fear or anger)

5 qualities of a propagandist:

  • Saying so much that is drowns out other voices
  • Saying things that make others seem illegitimate
  • Saying things to make yourself unquestionable
  • Saying things that are demonstrably untrue
  • Saying things to “stir up” anger or fear

PERVASIVE RHETORICAL AGGRESSION

Profile of a Missionary (the opposite of the propagandist essentially)

Consistent Cultivation of Healthy Public Dialogue

Propaganda vs. Passion

  • Trying to drown others out?
  • Trying to delegitimatize other people’s views?
  • Trying to cut off space for sincere questions?
  • Trying to stay accurate and factual as possible?
  • Tring to promote rational, thoughtful exchange?

Science being infiltrated by propaganda:

  • Business and corporations make partnerships with research. (e.g. Hard to find any research in mental health that is not funded by big pharma)
  • “It’s all pseudoscience!” (Vilification of any research that doesn’t support corporate interests. It’s Orwellian, and is pervasive and accepted today.)
  • Despite there being tons of scientific evidence, the tobacco industry delayed regulation for decades.

Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health

By David Michaels

Does this sound familiar?...

(Sorry, I know that this is meant to be a somewhat formal-ish research document, but seriously this guy is an absolute clown. Also note that Stripchat retweeted Dr. Ley tagging the handle @Brainonporn, an alternate account for Dr. Nicole Prause.)

  • Lack of sex education
  • Examples of Scientists saying that there’s “no evidence!”
  • There is no scientific consensus that added sugar (including added sugar in beverages) plays a unique role in the development of obesity and diabetes. – Dr. Richard Kahn
  • ''There is simply no scientific evidence whatsoever, no placebo-controlled double-blind study, that has established a cause-and-effect relationship between antidepressant pharmacotherapy of any class and suicidal acts or ideation'' - Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff
  • Then moving the goalpost to “there’s no good/conclusive/definitive evidence!” (REAL RESEARCHERS DON’T TALK LIKE THIS)
  • “There is no scientific consensus that added sugar (including added sugar in beverages) plays a unique role in the development of obesity and diabetes.” - Dr. Richard Kahn
  • “It’s all driven by a secret religious agenda/hidden bias!”
  • “All real researchers support my conclusions, everyone else is junk/pseudoscience.”

Propagandist Research Diagnostics

  1. Disregard for violation of space for others to disagree from three of the following (basically they’re sociopaths)
  1. Failure to conform to scientific and social norms with respect to ethical interactions among scholarly community
  2. Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or advantage, in the course of otherwise normative scholarly activities
  3. Impulsiveness and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated rhetorical provocations and confrontations
  4. Reckless disregard for the long-term well-being for those involved
  5. Lack of remorse, as indicated by indifference to or rationalization in regards to one’s ethical violations
  • Chemical imbalance is not a cause of depression, it is a lie.
  • Charles Grassley
  • Truth is freedom
  • If the number of studies were an issue everyone would’ve accepted the science already

Misleading Studies

  • “Sexual desire, not hypersexuality, is related to neurophysiological responses elicited by sexual images” (Steele et al., 2013)
  • Steele et al., 2013
  • Published July, 2013
  • Study Spokesperson: Nicole Prause
  • EEG study (brainwaves) on porn users
  • 52 subjects were recruited through ads, but had no idea if they were actual porn addicts (“Recruiting people who are experiencing problems regulating their viewing of sexual images.”)
  • The subjects were certainly not heterogeneous. Didn’t screen them for drug use, didn’t control for their age, sex, sexual orientation, whether they use drugs or not, etc.
  • NO CONTROL GROUP FOR COMPARISON! YOU HAVE TO COMPARE ADDICTS TO NON-ADDICTS!
  • Claims made by spokesperson Nicole Prause
  • Claim #1: Brains of “sex addicts” do not look like that of other addicts
  • False, the study found that they did. There were higher EEG readings to sexual images shown by the EEG than neutral, mirroring that of drug addicts reaction to their substance of choice.
  • Greater brain activation to porn aligns with the porn addiction model.
  • Claim #2: “Sex addicts” aren’t addicted, they simply have high libidos
  • False, Steele et al., 2013 found subjects with greater brain activation to porn had less sexual desire: “Larger P300 amplitude differences to pleasant sexual stimuli, relative to neutral stimuli, was negatively related to measures of sexual desire.”
  • This means that individuals with greater brain activation to porn would rather masturbate to porn than have sex with a real person.
  • EEG brainwaves assess levels of electrical activity on the scalp (brainwaves)
  • Does not address brain regions which are activated
  • Results are up to a variety of interpretations
  • For example, a person could be paying attention to the porn they showed them in the study because the actress looks like someone they know.
  • Much less expensive than actual brain scans (fMRI, see Voon et al., 2014)
  • Dr. David Ley made a blog post in 2013 which was a fictitious account of Steele et al. Actually read Steele et al to find that both Nicole Prause and Dr. David Ley’s claims are false.
  • Here are 5 peer-reviewed critiques of the Prause EEG study, all of which supports the porn addiction model.
  1. Neural Correlates of Sexual Cue Reactivity in Individuals with and without Compulsive Sexual Behaviours (2014)
  2. High Desire, or ‘merely’ an addiction? A response to Steele et.al. 2013
  3. Neuroscience of Internet Pornography Addiction: A Review and Update (2015)
  4. Is Internet Pornography Causing Sexual Dysfunctions? A Review with Clinical Reports (2016)
  5. Conscious and Non-Conscious Measures of Emotion: Do They Vary with Frequency of Pornography Use? (2017)
  6. Neurocognitive mechanisms in compulsive sexual behavior disorder (2018), Ewelina Kowalewska, Joshua B. Grubbs, Marc N. Potenza, Mateusz Gola, Małgorzata Draps, and Shane W.Kraus.
  7. Online Porn Addiction: What We Know and What We Don’t—A Systematic Review (2019), Rubén de Alarcón, Javier I. de la Iglesia, Nerea M. Casado and Angel L. Montejo.
  8. The Initiation and Development of Cybersex Addiction: Individual Vulnerability, Reinforcement Mechanism and Neural Mechanism” (2019) by He Wei, Shi Yahuan, Zhang wei, Luo Wenbo, He Wiezhan
  • David Ley’s March 2013, blog post
  • Close buddy of Nicole Prause. The article has no mention of ybop website, just a fictitious account of Steele et al.
  • Ley makes money selling two books that deny sex and porn addiction (“The Myth of Sex Addiction,” 2012 and “Ethical Porn for Dicks,” 2016). Pornhub (which is owned by porn giant MindGeek) is one of the five back-cover endorsements listed for Ley’s 2016 book about porn
  • David Ley is being paid to debunk porn and sex addiction. At the end of this Psychology Today blog post Ley advertises his services:
  • “Disclosure: David Ley has provided testimony in legal cases involving claims of sex addiction.”
  • “Modulation of late positive potentials by sexual images in problem users and controls inconsistent with “porn addiction” (Prause et al., 2015)
  • Prause et al., 2015
  • Published July, 2015.
  • Used old EEG readings from Steele et al. subjects for their so-called “porn addicts.” (Finally finished the second half of her study. :))
  • All it did was add a control group of moderate porn users for comparison to the old readings.
  • Instead of comparing P300 readings, it compared LPP readings
  • Bothe P300 and LPP readings are thought to access attention to stimulus (cue-reactivity)
  • Here are some 5 peer reviewed studies of the second Prause EEG study:
  1. Critique of “Prause et al. (2015) the latest falsification of addiction predictions“ (2016), Nicole Prause, Vaughn R. Steele, Cameron Staley, Dean Sabatinelli, Greg Hajcake (Prause et al., 2016) 
  2. Critique of “The Emperor Has No Clothes: A Review of the ‘Pornography Addiction’ Model” (2014), David Ley, Nicole Prause & Peter Finn (Ley et al., 2014)
  3. Dismantling the “group position” paper opposing porn and sex addiction (November, 2017)
  4. Analysis of “Data do not support sex as addictive” (Prause et al., 2017)
  5. Critique of Nicole Prause’s “Porn Is for Masturbation” (2019)

  • “Is Pornography Really about ‘Making Hate to Women’? Pornography Users Hold More Gender Egalitarian Attitudes Than Nonusers in a Representative American Sample” (Kohut et al., 2016)

  • Kohut framed egalitarianism so that religious populations would score lower
  • (1) Support for abortion, (2) Feminist identification, (3) Women holding positions of power, (4) Belief that family life suffers when the woman has a full-time job, and oddly enough (5) Holding more negative attitudes toward the traditional family.
  • By choosing these 5 criteria and ignoring endless other variables Kohut knew porn use would correlate with what was defined as egalitarianism.
  • Paper that attempts to counter the 75 studies to show that porn has negative effects on relationships.
  • There are two huge methodological flaws with this particular study:
  • The study does not rest on a representative sample
  • In this study 95% of the women used porn on their own. And 85% of the women had used porn since the beginning of the relationship (in some cases for years). The researchers appear to have skewed their sample to produce the results they were seeking. Reality: Cross-sectional data from the largest US survey (General Social Survey) reported that only 2.6% of women had visited a “pornographic website” in the last month. Data from 2000, 2002, 2004. For more see – Pornography and Marriage (2014)
  • The study used “open ended” questions where the subject could ramble on and on about porn.
  • The study employed “open ended” questions where the subject could ramble on and on about porn (it was qualitative rather than quantitative). Then the researchers read the ramblings and decided, after the fact, what answers were “important,” and how to present (spin?) them in their paper.
  • Despite these fatal flaws several couples reported significant negative effects from porn use, such as:
  • Pornography is easier, more interesting, more arousing, more desirable, or more gratifying than sex with a partner
  • Pornography use is desensitizing, decreases the ability to achieve or maintain sexual arousal, or to achieve orgasm.
  • Some said that specifically described desensitization as the effect of pornography use
  • Some were concerned a loss of intimacy or love.
  • It was suggested that pornography makes real sex more boring, more routine, less exiting, or less enjoyable

More Resources For Learning and Recovery

EasyPeasyMethod (adapted from Allen Carr’s EasyWay to Stop Smoking)

Fight The New Drug

Your Brain On Porn

Trafficking Hub

Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow