The role of pornography in the etiology of sexual aggression

Despite the public and scientific attention the topic has received, the evi dence fora causal link between pornography use and sexual offending remains equivocal. This article critically examines the research literature on the association of pornography and sexual offending, focusing on relevant expe rimental work. The difficulty of this research is highlighted in a discussi on of operational definitions of the term pornography, the choice of proxy measures for sexual offending in experimental research, and the emphasis gi ven sexual assault of adult females over other kinds of criminal sexual beh avior such as child molestation, exhibitionism, and voyeurism. We also revi ew the major theoretical perspectives-conditioning, excitation transfer, fe minist, and social learning-and some of the hypotheses that can be derived from them. From the existing evidence, we argue that individuals who are al ready predisposed to sexually offend are the most likely to show an effect of pornography exposure and are the most likely to show the strongest effec ts. Men who are not predisposed are unlikely to show an effect; if there ac tually is an effect, it is likely to be transient because these men would n ot normally seek violent pornography. Finally, we present a Darwinian persp ective on the possible relationship between pornography use and sexual aggr ession. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.