Back in the 1960s, researchers conducted an experiment that conditioned male participants to become sexually aroused by a pair of black, knee-length women’s boots. Subjects of the experiment were shown an image of the boots for 15 seconds, followed by several images of nude women for 30 seconds each. By the conclusion of the experiment, the participants had been conditioned to be sexually aroused by the pair of boots, as they associated the boots with the images of nude women.
Another study from the 1970s was conducted in a similar manner, where men were shown images of shapes followed by nude images of women, some moving and some still. The men became conditioned to be aroused by the shapes, and their sexual responses were greater when shown the moving pictures as opposed to still images.
Why does this matter? These experiments show us that our sexual arousal template can be influenced and changed by what we are exposed to. Given this, it should come as no surprise that research has also found exposure to pornography can shape what causes a person to become sexually aroused. And in a time where pornography is predominantly violent, degrading, and even illegal, this poses a grave threat to those who are most often victimized in pornography: women and children.
Public Health Harms of Pornography
How Pornography Influences One’s Sexual Arousal Template
Preferred sexual patterns, or “sexual arousal templates,” have been defined as “the total constellation of thoughts, images, behaviors, sounds, smells, sights, fantasies, and objects that arouse us sexually.”(1) The weight of scholarly evidence shows that one’s preferred sexual patterns, rather than being fixed, can be “supplemented or even replaced.”(2)
How? Often by viewing pornography.
Scholars have noted that a critical period of sexual behavior development forms around an individual’s first experiences with sexual arousal and desire, masturbation, orgasm, and sexual intercourse itself. During this period, the sensory and motor mechanics of the behavior become integrated and crystallized along with the development of preferences for ideal activities and physical features of a partner.
Just as the experiments were able to condition men to be aroused by shapes and inanimate objects, when a person is exposed to pornography, it conditions them to be aroused by the harmful behaviors that are depicted. Common examples of these harmful behaviors in mainstream porn have been captured in numerous studies and reports, including:
- One study analyzing 304 popular porn scenes found that 88.2% contained physical aggression (e.g., spanking, gagging, slapping) and 48.7% included verbal aggression (primarily name-calling). In most cases, men were the aggressors and women the targets—who often responded with neutrality or pleasure, sending the harmful message that sexual violence is normal or enjoyable.
- A 2020 study analyzing 7,430 porn videos from Pornhub and XVideos found that physical aggression—most commonly spanking and gagging—was present in 44.3% of Pornhub scenes and 33.9% of XVideos scenes, with women receiving 97% of the aggressive acts. Physical aggression was more prevalent than verbal, but when verbal aggression occurred, it often included gender-specific, profane, and derogatory language directed at women.
- Mainstream pornography websites have even been caught facilitating not only themes of image-based sexual abuse, but also real image-based sexual abuse including nonconsensually shared images, deepfakes, and recordings of sexual assaults and sex trafficking. To learn more, see NCOSE’s Not A Fantasy report here: NotAFantasy.org
This conditioning is amplified when a person is exposed during childhood or adolescence, a time when their brains are more pliable.
Not a Fantasy
Exposure to Pornography During Childhood Makes This Worse
Earlier exposure to pornography makes a user more susceptible to conditioning and escalation, whether that is escalation into consuming greater volume of pornography, or into viewing more extreme kinds of pornography.
This 2016 study found many pornography users escalate to viewing content they were previously not interested in and even thought was disgusting.
This kind of experience is regularly reported by users, as one pornography user explained:
“When I got internet back in my late teens I found many YouTube-like porn sites that categorized content by fetishes. At first my tastes were those of a normal teenage boy, but over the years my tastes shifted to aggressive content. Violent themes against women to be more specific, especially those anime/hentai videos with scenarios too vile to portray in real life.”
In a 2016 narrative essay for Fight the New Drug, another young many wrote:
“I gradually became desensitized and escalated to more extreme, brutal, and degrading videos…that hurts me even more because I am a sensitive and empathetic person and would never want anyone to suffer, especially not girls or young women in real life. It is devastating and cruel to see how you get accustomed to practices you would naturally find disgusting and inhumane.”
For some pornography users (not all) this escalation can spiral into the use of “deviant pornography,” including content like child sexual abuse material, or even bestiality.
A survey of 630 participants revealed that individuals who began using so-called “adult pornography” at an earlier age were more likely to progress to deviant pornography, indicating a desensitization to adult pornography over time. Participants who consumed both adult and deviant pornography were twice as likely to have started between the ages of 12 and 18 compared to those who only accessed adult pornography.
This progression is extremely dangerous because it molds one’s sexual arousal template to desire the harmful behaviors they are consuming in pornography.
Even beyond the types of content a person views, pornography use often impacts sexual arousal templates in ways that harm relationships, warping expectations and decreasing effective communication around sex. Research consistently shows a connection between pornography consumption and lower relationship quality and also increased sexual dissatisfaction.
A recent survey of U.S. teens, ages 13 to 17, reported that 15% of children were 10 or younger when they first saw pornography, and 54% were 13 years old or younger. The younger children are when exposed to pornography, the greater the risk of serious disruption to their sexual arousal templates.
This is why it is so crucial to protect children to exposure from online pornography! Call on your legislators to pass meaningful solutions, like age verification bills and the Safer Devices for Kids Act.
ACTION: Call on Your Legislators to Protect Children from Online Pornography!
1. Patrick Carnes, David L. Delmonico, and Elizabeth Griffin, In the Shadows of the Net: Breaking Free of Compulsive Online Sexual Behavior, 2nd ed. (Center City, MN: Hazelden Publishing, 2009), 58.
2. Patrick Carnes, Face the Shadow: Starting Sexual and Relationship Recovery, 3rd ed. (Gentle Path Press, 2015), 329.
