COMMENTS: Study contains a unique and interesting finding: Exposing low porn users to 10 rounds of 50 pornographic & 50 violent images artificially induced brain wave patterns mirroring frequent porn users.
In the current study, low porn users’ brain activities elicited by unpleasant and violent images became more similar after increasing exposure to violent and pornographic material, while the Kunaharan et al. (2017) study showed the same trend, in this case depending on reported pornography use instead of controlled exposure in the laboratory. What is interesting to note is that by merely exposing individuals who self-reported as being low porn users to a total of ten rounds of 50 pornographic and 50 violent images, we were able to “artificially induce” ERP curves which were consistent with self-reported high porn user.
Porn science deniers try their best to disparage the 50 brain studies on porn users and sex addicts, asserting subjects were magically “born with” addiction-related brain changes (talk about pseudoscience). If 10 rounds of porn viewing can induce significant brain changes (causing the brain patterns seen in frequent porn users), what might 10 years of chronic porn use induce?
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Arch Sex Behav. 2020 Mar 5. doi: 10.1007/s10508-019-01550-8.
Kunaharan S1, Halpin S1, Sitharthan T2, Walla P3,4.
Abstract
As we are often inundated with images of violence and pornography in modern times with the aid of mobile devices and unrestricted online access and content, the non-conscious effect of such exposure is an area of concern. To date, many clinicians and researchers in behavioral sciences rely on conscious responses from their clients to determine affective content. In doing so, they overlook the effect the non-conscious has on an individual’s emotions. The present study aimed to examine variations in conscious and non-conscious responses to emotion-inducing images following varying amounts of exposure to violent and pornographic images. Eighteen participants who self-reported as being low pornography users were presented with emotion-inducing images after no exposure (Session 1), after one round of exposure to 50 pornographic and 50 violent images (Session 2) and after a further nine rounds of exposure to 50 pornographic and 50 violent images (Session 3). Sessions were temporally separated by at least 2 days while startle reflex modulation (SRM) and scalp-recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to determine non-conscious emotion-related responses to pre-evaluated emotion pictures. Explicit valence and arousal ratings were assessed for each of those emotion pictures to determine conscious emotion effects potentially changing as a function of increasing controlled exposure to pornographic and violent visual material. Conscious explicit ratings and SRM amplitudes revealed no significant difference between the sessions. However, frontal ERP analysis revealed significant changes between processing of “violent” and “unpleasant” images at later ERP time windows, further supporting the growing body of research which shows that relying on self-report data does not result in a full understanding of emotional responses.
KEYWORDS: Aggression; Event-related potentials; Implicit versus explicit responses; Multi-methods; Pornography; Startle reflex modulation
PMID: 32140872
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