ATTITUDES OF US AND CZECH SLOVAK MENTAL-HEALTH AND HEALTH-PROFESSIONALS TOWARD 5 TYPES OF SEXUALLY EXPLICIT MATERIALS/

Mental health and health professionals' attitudes toward sexually expl icit materials in the U.S. and Czech/Slovak Republics were investigate d An instrument measuring attitudes toward educational, soft-core, har d-core, violence, and bizarre/paraphiliac sexually explicit materials was administered to sexologists, psychologist/counselors, and medical professionals. These professionals were attending conferences in the U .S. and the Czech/Slovak Republics between November 1992 and September 1993. Mental health and health professionals had the most favorable a ttitudes toward educational sexually explicit materials followed by so ft-core and hard-core materials, respectively. They had unfavorable at titudes toward violent and bizarre/paraphiliac sexually explicit mater ials, with particularly negative attitudes toward violent materials. A nalysis of covariance showed that strength of religious conviction was a significant covariate; thus professionals with stronger religious c onviction had more negative attitudes toward all five types of sexuall y explicit materials. When controlling for strength of religious convi ction: (i) sexologists had more positive attitudes toward most types o f sexually explicit materials; (ii) Czech professionals generally had more positive attitudes toward such materials than their U.S. counterp arts; and (iii) there were few differences between female and male pro fessionals in their reported attitudes. While previous literature has reported gender differences in attitudes toward sexually explicit mate rials, findings from this study suggest that this effect may be due to differences in religiosity among women and men, namely, that women te nd to be more religious.