Does viewing sexually explicit material make a person more likely to seek alternatives to their current romantic partner?
Research published in the November issue of Social Psychological and Personality Science found those who viewed pornography were more likely to engage in extradyadic behaviors — or intimate behaviors that occur outside of a committed relationship.
“With the growth of the pornography industry, it is important to consider the effects this material has on relationships,” lead researcher Andrea Marlea Gwinn of the University of Central Florida and her colleagues wrote in the study.
In her longitudinal study of 291 undergraduate students, Gwinn and her colleagues found participants who frequently viewed pornography were more likely to report they had engaged in kissing, sexual intimacy without intercourse, or sexual intercourse with someone other than their relationship partner within the past 2 months.
These findings held even after the researchers controlled for the potentially confounding variables of initial extradyadic behavior, sociosexuality, relationship length, baseline relationship satisfaction, social desirability, and participant gender and race.
Pornography could make people more likely to engage in extradyadic behavior because it shows highly attractive and sexually available alternatives to the viewer’s current relationship, the researchers said.
“One possible explanation for these findings involves the investment model, which posits that there are three components underlying commitment: perceived quality of alternatives, relationship satisfaction, and investment,” Gwinn and her colleagues wrote in their study.
“Individuals who are committed, satisfied, and invested in their relationships spend less time attending to attractive alternatives and are less likely to engage in infidelity. Our findings build upon the investment model by positing that pornography affects intimate extradyadic behavior by making alternatives seem more attractive and accessible.”
In a separate experiment conducted as part of the overall study, the researchers found that participants who were primed with sexually explicit material perceived themselves as having higher quality relationship alternatives. However, viewing the sexually explicit material perceived did not tend to make the participant less satisfied with their current relationship.
The study is limited by the fact that it only used undergraduate college students as participants. The researchers noted this group is typically “engaged in relatively young ‘fledgling’ relationships.”
“Our research suggests a powerful association between pornography consumption and increased attractiveness of alternative partners — an association that has direct implications for intimate extradyadic behavior. Future research should continue to examine the implications of pornography for relationship functioning,” Gwinn and her colleagues concluded in their study.
The research was co-authored by Nathaniel M. Lambert, Frank D. Fincham, and Jon K. Maner.
