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Pornography consumption in women and its association with sexual desire and sexual satisfaction

Publication

Abstract

Several studies have established a negative relation between the pornography use and relationship quality (e.g. Maddox et al. 2011) or sexual satisfaction (e.g.

Peter & Valkenburg, 2009), but most of these studies were done only between users and non-users of pornography (e.g. Poulsen et al., 2013).

The purpose of our study was to test how frequency of pornography use in committed women influenced their sexual and relationship satisfaction. Participants were selected using quota sampling (per age category, education and region) from the national representative panel of Slovak Republic and contacted via email.

All women (N = 754/age range 18 - 55+) were asked if they have ever consumed erotic materials and 333 of them (mean age = 39, SD 13,73) confirmed use of pornography, their relationship status and completed questionnaires about their sexual and relationship life and frequency of pornography consumption on 9-pointed Likert scale (1=less than once a year, 9=more than once per day). We performed GLM analysis including data about sexual desire, sexual and relationship satisfaction, to investigate, which variables influenced the frequency of pornography consumption.

In GLM model, higher sexual desire towards current partner, higher sociosexuality and higher tendency to sexual addiction significantly predicted frequency of pornography consumption in women and accounted for 16% of its total variance of (R=.178; adjusted R2 = .160; p < .001) Our results show, that women in long-term relationship who use pornography more frequently may have higher sexual desire, which is connected with desire for sexual variety and sensation seeking and may result in sexual addiction.