CORRELATES OF SUPPORT FOR CENSORSHIP OF SEXUAL, SEXUALLY VIOLENT, ANDVIOLENT MEDIA

Willingness to ban various forms of sexual, violent, and sexually viol ent media was assessed through a random digit dialing survey of adults in Seminole County, FL. Of 1,291 eligible adults contacted, 304 (23.5 %) completed the interview. Substantial majorities (71-77%) supported censoring sexually violent media, about half (47-54%) supported censor ing nonsexual violent media, and about one third supported censoring n onviolent sexually explicit movies (32%) and videotapes (28%). Princip le components analysis of these items revealed two clear factors: supp ort for banning sexual media and support for banning violent and sexua lly violent media. Sexual conservatism, sex role stereotyping, authori tarianism, age, gender, concern about pornography's effects, and suppo rt for a local anti-pornography campaign were consistently more highly correlated with support for censoring sexual media than with support for censoring violent media. Regression analysis showed that support f or banning sexual media and concern about pornography's effects both c ontributed to the prediction of support for anti-pornography campaigns . Contrary to expectations, those low in sex role stereotyping showed low levels of support for censoring sexual media and low levels of con cern about pornography's effects, relative both to fundamentalists and other respondents.