Watching violent pornography is associated with a higher likelihood of committing sexual aggression among university students, especially when viewers believe the videos reflect reality and think their friends hold victim-blaming attitudes. These findings, published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, suggest that educational programs must teach young adults to critically evaluate explicit media. The results also emphasize the need to challenge harmful social norms within peer groups.
As young people navigate romantic relationships, they build mental blueprints for how intimate encounters should unfold. Psychologists call these blueprints sexual scripts. These expectations are shaped by personal experiences and external influences, including explicit internet videos and conversations with friends. Because a massive amount of mainstream adult material includes physical aggression like slapping or choking, young adults are routinely exposed to media that pairs violence with sexual pleasure.
Melissa S. de Roos, a researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, led a team to study how consuming this violent material interacts with a person’s social environment to influence behavior. The research builds on theories suggesting that explicit media alone does not automatically create violent behavior. Instead, a combination of cultural messages and social networks merges to guide individual actions.
The study focused on two specific factors that might alter the impact of violent media. The first was perceived realism. This concept describes how closely a person believes adult videos mirror actual life. The second factor was the acceptance of rape myths within a person’s friend circle.
Rape myths contribute heavily to a culture that excuses sexual violence. These are false beliefs that blame targets of assault or make excuses for perpetrators, such as the idea that people exaggerate the impact of nonconsensual contact. When people believe these myths, they often fail to identify situations where a person is being coerced. Some individuals use these narratives to justify their own persistence after a partner has expressed a desire to stop an encounter.
These false narratives rely heavily on the idea of a “real rape” scenario. This is a stereotype portraying assault exclusively as a violent attack by an unknown assailant in a dark alley. The prevalence of this stereotype allows people to ignore instances of acquaintance assault or verbal coercion. It gives individuals a mental loophole to excuse behavior that actually violates consent.
To gather data, the researchers distributed an online survey to university students in the Netherlands. The final sample included 677 participants, consisting of about two thirds women and one third men. The participants answered detailed questions about their media habits. They indicated their age at first use, average hours watched per week, and the specific genres they preferred.
The participants rated how often they watched content featuring various acts. These genres included conventional acts along with group encounters, fetish materials, and explicit depictions of violence or coercion. The respondents then rated how acceptable they found explicit media and how realistic they considered the material to be.
The survey then asked participants to imagine a private conversation with their three closest friends. Based on this imagined scenario, respondents rated how strongly their friends would agree with statements excusing sexual coercion. For instance, participants guessed if their friends believed that attackers simply get too carried away during intimate moments.
Finally, the researchers used a behavioral questionnaire to ask participants about their own actions. The survey asked if they had ever engaged in unwanted sexual contact, attempted coercion, or used threats of force while attending university. The questionnaire broke these behaviors down into specific physical acts, allowing the researchers to categorize respondents based on the severity of their actions.
The results revealed distinct differences in how men and women engage with explicit materials. Male participants reported viewing adult content much more frequently than female participants did. The men held more positive attitudes toward the material and were much more likely to report watching content that featured violence or coercive scenarios.
In addition to differences in media habits, the male respondents perceived their friend groups as having a higher tolerance for victim-blaming myths compared with the female respondents. Overall, peer acceptance of these myths was relatively low across the entire sample. The exact phrasing of the responses still showed a gap between the genders, as women believed their friends would strongly disagree with excuses for violence, while men felt their friends would only mildly disagree.
When it came to aggressive behavior, male students who viewed violent explicit media had a higher risk of committing sexual aggression. This association grew stronger when the men viewed the adult videos as an accurate portrayal of real life. If a male student thought the videos were highly realistic, his overall risk for reporting abusive behavior was elevated.
The link between media consumption and aggressive behavior was also amplified when male students believed their close friends accepted false narratives about assault. If a man consumed violent videos and felt his peer group tolerated coercion, his likelihood of committing an offense rose. This pattern suggests that adult videos reinforce existing victim-blaming attitudes that are subtly tolerated among some male friend circles.
The research team highlighted the importance of peer dynamics, especially in all-male social circles. Within these groups, harmful myths are sometimes subtly reinforced through jokes or a failure to call out bad behavior. This lack of vocal objection can lead to a phenomenon known as pluralistic ignorance. In this situation, individuals falsely assume their friends endorse victim-blaming ideas just because no one is actively arguing against them.
The trend looked completely different for female students. Simply watching violent explicit content was not independently linked to abusive behavior for the women in the study. A link between viewing violent material and committing sexual aggression only appeared among women who believed their close friends were accepting of toxic narratives about assault. For women, the social environment appears to heavily dictate whether aggressive media consumption translates into physical actions.
The researchers observed an intriguing discrepancy in how people report their own actions. The survey asked participants about specific physical acts involving force or incapacitation, which legally constitute rape. It also included a separate item, asking: “Do you think you may have ever raped someone?”
Many individuals admitted to the specific coercive actions but denied the label. Among the men who met the behavioral criteria for rape, roughly two thirds denied ever raping anyone when asked the direct question. The denial rate was even higher for the women, with about 87 percent rejecting the label despite their reported actions. The authors suggest this highlights how perpetrators fail to recognize their own actions, relying instead on the false “real rape” narrative.
Because the study relies on data collected at a single point in time, the results cannot prove that watching violent media forces people to commit assault. It is entirely possible that individuals who already possess a baseline interest in aggressive behavior actively seek out media that matches their preferences. A person with pre-existing aggressive tendencies might naturally gravitate toward violent videos. To better understand this timeline, researchers recommend observing how media habits change alongside behavior over several years.
The researchers note that their findings offer practical ideas for preventing violence on college campuses. Educational programs should focus heavily on improving media literacy. If instructors can teach young adults to view adult videos as fictional entertainment rather than real-world instructional guides, they might reduce the influence of violent content.
Prevention strategies must also target behavior within social groups. Because peer beliefs heavily alter the risk of aggression, interventions should encourage people to actively speak out against victim blaming when talking with their friends. Changing the social expectations within a friend group limits the normalization of violence, taking away the social cover that allows people to make excuses for coercive behavior.
Campus initiatives also need to include women. Even though women perpetrate sexual violence at lower rates than men, the study shows that female students are still highly susceptible to peer influences that promote toxic ideas. Interventions that build healthy communication skills and teach students to recognize coercion can benefit all members of a college community.
The study, “Moderating Effects on the Link between Violent Pornography and Sexual Aggression,” was authored by Melissa S. de Roos and Emma Ferrando.
