Rd. Fisher et al., CORRELATES OF SUPPORT FOR CENSORSHIP OF SEXUAL, SEXUALLY VIOLENT, ANDVIOLENT MEDIA, The Journal of sex research, 31(3), 1994, pp. 229-240
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.