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Dr. Dolf Zillman and Dr. Jennings Bryant showed that continued exposure to pornography had serious negative effects on beliefs about sexuality in general, and on attitudes toward women in particular. They also found that pornography desensitizes people to rape as a criminal offense, and that massive exposure to pornography encourages a desire for increasingly deviant materials that depict violence (such as sadomasochism and rape)
Individuals with a predisposition for aggression (i.e., men who are at relatively high risk for aggression) have shown to be particularly drawn to images of pornography and are more likely to expose themselves to such images in the future than lower risk individuals. Moreover, a number of priming studies have shown that men with earlier risk characteristics may interpret sexually explicit material differently than lower risk individuals, such that pornography activates and reinforces inappropriate cognitive representations (e.g., hostility toward women) and fosters the development of sexual preoccupation in these men
Again, we are not saying that everyone who watches porn is going to turn into an attacker. That would be illogical and alarmist. We are saying that porn isn’t as harmless as the industry and society would have you think.
The facts are clear: pornography is harmful and research
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