Chris Jones

Psychology 1010
Justice Morath
October 6, 2014
Lab 2: Is Pornography Harmful?
Whether people like it or not, pornography is a very relevant, impactful and widely
consumed form of media. It is a billion dollar industry, and is rapidly expanding because of how
easy it is for individuals to access it with todays technology. However, just because it is easy to
access it does not necessarily mean that people should use it. The question remains, is
pornography harmful?
In the article, Is Pornography Harmful?, Diana E. H. Russell argues that viewing
pornography is harmful to society because it increases the likelihood that men who view it are
more likely to rape and sexually assault women. She cites various academic studies and rape
victims testimonies to support her claim. Her cited studies mostly include young adult males
who are required to watch various sexual scenes and movies ranging nonviolent and nonexplicit to very sexually violent and explicit and express their personal responses.. Her cited
studies conclude that individuals who watched sexually violent media were more likely to agree
with dehumanizing statements about women and assumptions such as women enjoy to be
forced to have sex. All of these studies however could be very inaccurate as it requires the
individual to self-disclose and rate how sexually aroused they are, which can be potentially,
very embarrassing. Russells arguments mostly use the classical conditioning to explain how a
person who watched violent pornography would be more likely to fantasize about forcing
women to have sex, and more likely to actually act on these fantasies.

The argument saying that pornography is not harmful and does not cause these violent
actions towards others uses very different evidence to support its claim. The central argument
is that there is no way to prove a causal relationship between pornography and rape and sexual
assault cases. He cites many studies similar to the counter argument however the author then
picks them apart saying that their findings do not adequately support that violent pornography
causes individuals to be more sexually violent, especially against women. The article says that
although violent pornography makes individuals more likely to believe rape myths, this does
not prove that they are more likely to commit violent acts, and more data is needed to support
this claim. The author also uses a study with actual perpetrators of violent sexual crimes, similar
to the other studies done in the article involving viewings of sexually violent acts and nonviolent sexual acts followed by their self-disclosure after the viewings. The other points out that
many of these males may be lying about the results in order to avoid repercussions from
admitting arousal to explicit violent sexual media. The author explores that it is more likely that
individuals who watch violent pornography are already predisposed to violent sexual crimes,
and that while these may assist in pushing the individual to commit these crimes, it should not
be considered to be the predominant cause.
I believe that each of these arguments make many valid observations but lack the
conclusive data to be absolute. While violent pornography may cause individuals to agree with
more violent sexual statements, I think it is a bit of a stretch to say that we have scientifically
proven that violent pornography directly causes violent sexual crimes. In general I believe that
pornography has the potential to be harmful to individuals by putting strain on romantic
relationships they either are involved in currently or in the future, however there is not enough

scientific data to support my claim that pornography is harmful. I personally believe that many
of the studies and articles are biased, including the one I have used in this essay.
The article shows bias when arguing that pornography is harmful because the author
refers to men as males which is a slightly dehumanizing word, while she refers to women as
women which is a much human word than female. In the argument saying that
pornography is not harmful the author does not spend enough time discussing non-violent
pornography, only saying that violent pornography cannot be proved to cause violent acts. The
author also doesnt give much evidence to prove that pornography is not harmful, only that it
cannot be directly linked to violent sexual crimes. Neither author explores whether or not
pornography could be harmful to an individual through depression and/ or anxiety, which in my
opinion, seems like just as significant as whether or not pornography affects sexual crime rates
in an individual.
Scientific results can inform moral decisions, and I believe that is one of sciences
principle uses. Considering that science is merely a tool to discover answers to questions
through use of the scientific method, its information depending on what the original question
was, could be used for an individual to help define their own morals. Or course physics may
have little use in defining morals, but psychology, sociology, and communication sciences data
could all be used by individuals to assess morality. However, it is extremely important that
science does not have a moral agenda, and its only purpose is to answer questions about
ourselves and our world.