Pornography and Sexual Aggression PAUL POLLARD University o f Central L a n c a s h i r e , Preston, U.K. This paper reviews work on the relation between pornography and sexual aggression, covering experimental research on arousal, attitudes, and laboratory aggression, and some correlational studies. The term pornography is intended to cover the materials used in the relevant research, although not all of these would necessarily be seen as "pornographic." The main body of the review is divided between "aggressive" and "not specifically aggressive" pornography, with some consideration in the discussion of the nature of supposedly "nonaggressive" pornography. In the case of sexually aggressive pornography, a variety of undesirable effects have been observed. Males show equal sexual arousal to pornographic rape depictions and consenting intercourse depictions under certain "disinhibiting" circumstances, such as anger or depicted victim pleasure, and these disinhibitors can also produce increased laboratory aggression against female targets by males exposed to aggressive pornography. Aggressive and, to some extent, not specifically aggressive pornography have also been found to increase the endorsement of attitude statements that are supportive of sexual aggression. The paper concludes with a discussion of ethical considerations, possible psychological bases of the effects, and the question of censorship. It is concluded that although several types of materials may produce behavioral orientation toward, and/or attitudinal support for, sexual aggression, this is a function of aggression and dominance themes rather than the explicitness of the sexual cues. These themes extend beyond explicit pornography, through extremely violent stimuli that lack explicit sexual elements, to widely consumed "normal" films and reading matter.

Pornography has clearly harmful effects in certain cases, such as on the actors in child pornography. Further, there is a range o f potential harmful effects. This paper is restricted to consideration of harmful effects on the c o n s u m e r (particularly the male consumer) in terms o f undesirable attitudes about, or inclination toward, sexual aggression, but there is no intention to imply that there are not other, possibly equally important, effects. For instance, there is no consideration o f the more general effects that the existence o f pornography may have on nonconsumers, although a case could be made that the image o f w o m e n frequently portrayed has wide-ranging effects extending to such superficially unconnected areas o f life as sexual equality in e m p l o y ment, education, and so on. Lottes, Weinberg, and Weller (1993) asked a sample o f (U.S.) undergraduates to rate categories o f material as to whether they were pornographic (the researchers did not show examples). Movies or videos with explicit sex scenes were rated as p o r n o g r a p h i c by most of the sample, but there were less-clear-cut responses for other categories. Depictions o f nude adults were rated as definitely pornography by only 10% o f the sample, but less than half rated them as probably or definitely not p o r n o g r a p h y (more than 40% chose the "might be" option). For depictions that " m a k e a point o f s h o w i n g genitalia," just under a quarter o f the males and a third o f the females rated them as Current Psychology: Developmental ° Learning ° Personality • Social Fall, 1995, Vol. 14, No. 3, 200-221.

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definitely pornographic, but 20% of the same sample chose the probably or definitelynot options. The definition of pornography thus seems to be at least partly a matter of opinion, and no definition will be attempted here. Use of the term pornography in the title of this review is intended to cover the range of materials used in relevant research, some of which many people would probably not view as pornographic. Also, researchers in the area have typically not attempted a distinction between pornography and

erotica. One distinction that is often made is between aggressive and nonaggressive pornography, and although there are some problems with this distinction, it provides a useful organizing framework for a review of the literature. Consideration of the issue of whether nonaggressive pornography is nonaggressive will be deferred to the discussion. Aggressive pornography involves stimuli in which sexual and (overtly) aggressive cues are intermingled. One common form is the depiction of enforced intercourse. Because this content would seem a priori to have the greatest likelihood of having attitudinal or behavioral effects related to sexual aggression, it seems appropriate to discuss it first. AGGRESSIVE PORNOGRAPHY One may query whether aggressive pornography is sexually arousing for "typical" males because any arousal to the sexual cues may be expected to be normally inhibited by the aversive aspects of the stimulus. Before considering attitudinal and behavioral effects, it is thus relevant to address the issue of whether sexual arousal to depictions of enforced intercourse is limited to only a small subgroup of males.

Arousal In a series of studies in the 1970s, Abel and coworkers (e.g., Abel, Barlow, Blanchard, & Guild, 1977) found that controls reliably showed less arousal to rape than to consenting depictions, whereas convicted rapists in general showed equal levels of arousal to both. There was some indication that the violence involved was a contributor to the convicted rapists' arousal because their arousal to rape depictions was related to their arousal response to nonsexual aggression against women. Support for this interpretation was provided by Quinsey, Chaplin, and Upfold (1984), who found that convicted rapists were more sexually aroused by nonsexual aggression than were controls. AveryClark and Laws (1984), looking at child sex offenders, found equal arousal to violent and nonviolent depictions only in subjects who had themselves committed a violent assault, although all their child sex offender subjects were equally aroused by depictions of child molestation involving "consent" or physical restraint. This again suggests that males convicted of violent attacks may be particularly aroused by violence. However, an important theoretical perspective has developed (e.g., Barbaree, Marshall, & Lanthier, 1979) that places the focus on arousal despite, rather than because of, the violent cues. From this perspective, because the sexual cues are equivalent across controlled depictions of rape and consenting intercourse, lowered arousal to the former

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is due to the violent cues inhibiting sexual arousal. If a group shows equal arousal, the question then becomes why the violent cues do not inhibit arousal rather than why they produce it. This early work thus suggested that "normal" males showed inhibited sexual arousal to violent sexual depictions, whereas (convicted) rapists form a group of "deviant" males who do not. Later work has shown this impression to be invalid, however. Baxter, Barbaree, and Marshall (1986), using a large "psychiatrically normal" group of convicted rapists, failed to replicate earlier work in that the rapists in their sample did show inhibited arousal to rape depictions, a finding also reported by Hall (1989). 1 Similarly, Hall, Proctor, and Nelson (1988) failed to replicate the Avery-Clarke and Laws finding that violent (child) sex offenders were as aroused by violent as by "consenting" child rape scenarios (see also Quinsey & Laws, 1990, and Hall, 1990, for discussion of the Hall et al. study). Baxter et al. comment that "it may very well be that deviant sexual a r o u s a l . . , is a characteristic only of the most dangerous or most disturbed rapists" (p. 519). Both Baxter et al. and Hall et al. argue that the earlier studies, such as those by Abel et al., were conducted on extremely disturbed criminals who had often committed multiple crimes. Because rapists for whom rape is a "sexual preference" may be found only in a severely disturbed population, the data from these deviants may inflate group means so that convicted rapists spuriously appear to show no inhibition. The most compelling evidence against the idea that arousal to violent sexual depictions is limited to a small group of deviant males has come from research on undergraduate subjects. Malamuth, Heim, and Feshbach (1980) found that, although selfreported 2 sexual arousal was lower for rape depictions in an initial experiment, significantly higher arousal was reported in the second experiment when the victim was said to have experienced an orgasm as a result of the rape. Malamuth and Check (1980a) factorially manipulated consent, presence of pain cues, and outcome for the victim (disgust vs. arousal and pleasure). Only the last factor affected reported sexual arousal--subjects reporting more arousal when the woman in the story was aroused, irrespective of whether the story concerned a rape or a consenting interaction. The victim also tended to be perceived as more willing if she became aroused. In both studies, although the reported arousal of both sexes was affected by the portrayed victim arousal, the general level of reported sexual arousal was higher for males than for females. In the Malamuth et al. study, females reported being more offended, angered, embarrassed, and frustrated by the rape depictions than did males. Malamuth et al. pointed out that involuntary arousal in response to rape or sexual attack is a popular theme in pornography and has been reported as a common belief in convicted rapists. They suggest that factors such as this may disinhibit the normal inhibition. Related results are reported by Bond and Mosher (1986), who asked female subjects to imagine their personal involvement in tape-recorded scenarios depicting either a "realistic" rape, involving no victim pleasure, or a "rape fantasy," involving victim arousal. More arousal to, and enjoyment of, the latter was reported. Also, the realistic rape produced significantly more negative reactions such as anger, disgust, fear, and depression. The studies depicting victim enjoyment show that in a nonincarcerated (student)

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population, lack of consent can be an irrelevant factor in sexual response to a rape scenario if a disinhibitory factor is present. Another disinhibitory factor that has been implicated is anger. Yates, Barbaree, and Marshall (1984) auditorily presented male subjects with rape and nonrape depictions in two sessions. Between the sessions some subjects performed on an exercise bicycle, and half of these were angered by a female confederate who made unflattering remarks about their attainment. Angered subjects showed equal arousal to the rape and nonrape depictions, whereas the exercise and noexercise control groups showed lower arousal to rape than consenting depictions, as did all groups in the first session. In a very similar design, Barbaree, Marshall, Yates, and Lightfoot (1983) gave subjects alcoholic or nonalcoholic drinks prior to session two, half the subjects in each group being told that they would, or would not, receive an alcoholic drink. All groups showed more arousal to consenting depictions in both sessions, but this effect was diminished in subjects who had received alcohol, although results were not clear-cut because the expectancy manipulation did not work very well. Given that expectancy is almost always confounded with intake in everyday life, however, it is reasonable to conclude that substantial alcohol consumption could act as another disinhibitor for males. Although not explicitly comparing sexual arousal, the results of George and Marlatt (1986) are comparable to the above, in that they found that both anger and alcohol expectancy (although not intake) increased the relative time that male subjects spent viewing "violent-erotic," compared with "erotic," slides. There are thus a variety of situations in which "typical" males will show sexual arousal to aggressive pornography. In particular, the common theme of enforced intercourse leading to victim arousal appears to be as stimulating as nonaggressive pornography to male consumers. Although victim arousal has a comparable effect on female subjects, it is probably important to bear in mind that females report much lower levels of arousal to sexually aggressive stimuli. Habituation

The findings of, and earlier work reviewed by Eccles, Marshall, and Barbaree (1988) indicate that sexual arousal to pornographic stimuli shows some habituation. Ceniti and Malamuth (1984) looked at changes in arousal to written rape depictions after subjects had been exposed for a month to an extensive diet of either sexually aggressive or nonaggressive pornography (two films per week for three weeks). Subjects who had not originally shown relative high arousal to rape depictions showed no habituation effects, but subjects who had initially showed little discrimination between arousal to rape or consenting depictions showed lower arousal to the written rape depictions in the posttest. There is thus some evidence that sexual arousal to rape depictions may habituate, although the habituation findings were not entirely consistent and may have been observed partly because the (written) test stimuli were probably less compelling than the filmed pornography to which the subjects had been exposed. If exposure to pornography leads to habituation, then this could be seen as mitigating any worries about its harmful effects. However, as Ceniti and Malamuth (1984)

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point out, outside an experimental situation the interstimulus interval between exposures may be sufficient to prevent habituation's occurring. In any case, there may be no reason to view habituation as desirable. As Berkowitz (1984) has pointed out, habituation to depictions of sexual aggression may indicate that the subjects are desensitized to it, and thus that they would be more tolerant of such aggression.

Attitudinal Effects Several authors have pointed out that victim arousal and enjoyment are a common theme in pornography and thus that violent pornography will tend to be generally arousing. However, effects are not limited to arousal. Exposure to a rape depiction in which the victim experiences involuntary pleasure has been found to lead males, although not females, to perceive the victim of a subsequently presented rape scenario as experiencing less trauma and more pleasure, and to increase males' belief that some women would enjoy sexual aggression (Malamuth, Haber, & Feshbach, 1980; Malamuth & Check, 1985). Although the Malamuth et al. (1980) and Malamuth and Check (1985) studies generally appear to indicate that sexually violent stimuli only heighten these beliefs in male subjects, there is also evidence of undesirable effects on female subjects. Schwartz and Brand (1983) found that exposure to a rape depiction had negative effects on female subjects' trust and self-esteem and produced more sex role conservatism. Slightly different results are reported by Mayerson and Taylor (1987), who divided subjects into high (traditional) and low groups on Burt's (1980) Sex Role Stereotyping (SRS) scale. Reading a rape scenario led to lower self-esteem in low SRS women but increased self-esteem in high SRS women. Whether or not the victim was said to be aroused had no effect. The difference between the two studies could be due to the fact that Schwarz and Brand used a (two) stranger rape whereas Mayerson and Taylor used a graphic description of rape by a marginal acquaintance at a party. It seems that rape portrayals have negative, although different, effects on both sexes. For males, they can increase the idea that rape is not particularly traumatic for, and may even be desired by, the victim (Malamuth and coworkers). For females, they can have the opposite effect: increasing the salience and perceived trauma of the victimization, possibly leading to more conservative and constrained behavior. Materials typically used for rape depictions are pornographic stimuli that would usually be available only from "specialist" outlets. Linz, Donnerstein, and Penrod (1984) extended investigation of sexually violent stimuli to "slasher" films, which do not focus primarily on rape depictions and had in some cases been previously shown on the college campus. They exposed twelve male subjects to one extremely violent film a day for five days (e.g., Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Toolbox Murders). These contained "explicit scenes of violence in which the victims are nearly always female," some but not all of the attacks being sexual and the assault usually ending in the death of the victim. Subjects were then shown a videotaped reenactment of a rape trial. At the end of the week, subjects rated the last film as less violent and less degrading to women than they had rated the first film (the films assigned to days one and five were

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counterbalanced), a finding replicated by Linz, Donnerstein, and Penrod (1988). Subjects found the films much less distasteful after exposure to a couple of films. In response to the rape, subjects in the Linz et al. (1984) study rated the victim as significantly less injured and less "worthy," and nonsignificantly more responsible, than did control subjects who had not seen the films. For the subjects who had seen the films, the less the perception of the offensiveness and violence of the day five film, the less the sympathy and injury, and the more the responsibility, that was attributed to the rape victim. The study by Linz et al. (1988) replicated effects for sympathy and empathy, although it did not replicate judgments about victim injury (possibly due to use of a photograph) or responsibility. One reason for the findings that Linz et al. (1984) discussed is in terms of classical conditioning. "For example, in one carefully crafted scene (from Toolbox Murders), the background music that accompanied a scene in which a woman masturbated is reintroduced during a violent assault scene. Additional cues, such as the victim's nudity as she attempts to escape the assailant after the first assault and the eroticized portrayal of the dead victim as a "pin up" style photograph at the end of the scene, may have the effect of classically conditioning sexual arousal to a violent scene." (pp. 143-144) An equally disturbing possibility Linz et al. raise is that the female victims may be viewed as "deserving their plight (i.e., as sexually promiscuous or 'too liberated')" (p. 144). Although more generally available than pornographic rape depictions, the stimuli studied by Linz et al. are probably still viewed by only a small minority of people. However, many widely available films that would not normally be viewed as pornographic contain elements of sexual aggression. This point led Malamuth and Check (1981) to study the effects of popular general release films. Over a four day period, two films (The Getaway and Swept Away) that included portrayals of sexual violence were shown to undergraduates in a natural setting (as members of a general audience in the campus cinema). On testing 3 to 7 days later, males showed significantly higher Acceptance of Interpersonal Violence (AIV) and nonsignificantly higher Rape Myth Acceptance (RMA) scores than did controls. There was no effect of the films on females, the trend being in the opposite direction. Burt's (1980) AIV and RMA scales have been found to be related to self-reported likelihood of committing a rape (Check & Malamuth, 1985; Pryor, 1987), to self-reported sexual aggression (Koss, Leonard, Beezley, & Oros, 1985; Muehlenhard & Linton, 1987; Rapaport & Burkhart, 1984), and to level of laboratory noise aggression against female, but not male, targets (Malamuth, 1983, 1988). As Malamuth and Check point out, it is not known how long this effect would endure, but given the widespread showing of these films, the study clearly indicates that general media influences can produce sexually aggressive attitudes in males. These films were not, however, sexually explicit. Thus, although reinforcing the link between depicted male on female violence and undesirable attitudinal effects, the study brings into question the extent to which sexual cues are important mediators of this effect.

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Behavioral Effects

The attitudinal effects discussed above are undesirable in their own right, but the question does remain as to the extent to which they would translate into actual aggressive behavior. Smeaton and Byrne (1987) found no effects on likelihood of raping (LR) measures of prior exposure to 30 minutes of either nonaggressive sexual scenes or aggressive scenes of the type used by Linz et al. (1984). However, although longterm exposure might be expected to have effects, it is perhaps not surprising that shortterm exposure did not affect self-reported LR measures as these have a limited scale and thus are probably fairly insensitive to capturing small effects. Demare, Briere, and Lips (1988) asked subjects to report their pornography use and also asked for LR predictions. Use of sexually violent rape pornography, although not other types, was found to predict the LR measures. Although LR measures are problematic in that subjects cannot necessarily predict their own behavior, there is reasonable evidence for their validity. They have been found to be associated with arousal to rape depictions (Malamuth & Check, 1980b, 1983; Malamuth, Check, & Briere, 1986; Mosher & Anderson, 1986), and with self-reports of actual previous sexual aggression (Malamuth, 1989a; Murphy, Coleman, & Haynes, 1986; Petty & Dawson, 1989; Smeaton & Byrne, 1987). The Demare et al. study thus does suggest a clear link between pornography consumption and behavior. Silbert and Pines (1984) studied prostitutes who had been raped and, although asking no questions about pornography, found that 24% spontaneously mentioned references to pornography by their attacker. However, as this (apart from other obvious problems of interpretation) and the Demare et al. study were correlational, it cannot be assumed that the link is causal. Donnerstein (1980) showed male subjects neutral, "erotic," or rape films and then gave them the opportunity to aggress against a male or female target in a pseudo learning situation. Although the erotic and rape films produced equivalent amounts of general arousal (blood pressure), the rape depiction produced more aggression (psetldoelectric shock) against a female target than a male target, and more aggression against a female than did the neutral or erotic films. These effects were heightened when the subjects had been previously angered. Donnerstein and Berkowitz (1981) varied the outcome of a rape film: the female finally smiling and not resisting, or clearly suffering from, a rape by two males. Only the rape with the former ending produced more aggression toward a female target than the erotic or neutral films, although for angered subjects both rape films produced heightened aggression. As in Donnerstein (1980), the film effects were specific to female targets. It is reasonable to conclude that these are behavioral effects of the disinhibition discussed in the section on arousal. Victim "pleasure" disinhibited all subjects, and anger disinhibited subjects to the extent that even the most aversive rape depiction triggered aggression. Disinhibitors that raise male arousal to rape fantasy thus appear to produce corresponding increases in specific antifemale aggression. However the results of Malamuth and Ceniti (1986) weaken the generalizability of the Donnerstein findings. They presented a subsample of the subjects used in the Ceniti and Malamuth (1984) experiment with the opportunity to (noise) aggress against

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a female target in a pseudo-ESP learning experiment. Preexposure to the sexually violent or nonviolent films did not affect the amount of noise punishment delivered when compared with the no exposure controls. Also, there was no effect of film exposure on the subjects' LR ratings, taken at the beginning and end of the study. Malamuth and Ceniti point out that the most likely reason for the discrepancy with the Donnerstein findings is that their aggression measures were taken after a delay of 3 to 14 days. Whether exposure will produce long-term effects is thus called into question, although Malamuth and Ceniti suggest that the effects of the aggressive stimuli may emerge at a later time if appropriate retrieval cues are present in the situation. In the Donnerstein studies, the "erotic" film condition did not produce increased aggression. Donnerstein and Linz (1986) and Linz, Donnerstein, and Penrod (1987) have emphasized that the key factor is aggression rather than sexual explicitness, and both studies cite an unpublished experiment by Donnerstein and Berkowitz that exposed subjects to films containing pornography and or aggression against women, and then allowed them the opportunity for laboratory aggression against a female. The aggressive pornographic film produced highest levels of aggression, but the nonsexual aggressive film produced more aggression than the nonaggressive pornographic film, which did not produce more aggression than a neutral control film. "NOT SPECIFICALLY AGGRESSIVE" PORNOGRAPHY Research has also focused on other forms of pornography that are not specifically aimed at aggressive depictions. It does not seem to me appropriate, however, to label these in general "nonaggressive" because it is not necessarily the case that such stimuli will not have aggressive elements. In some cases, the research looks at pornography usage without particularly considering (or reporting) the extent to which it contains aggressive images, and in other cases stimuli that have been screened for overtly aggressive depictions such as rape may well contain more subtle aggressive cues. A T r l T U D I N A L EFFECTS Malamuth and Check (1985) report a correlation between self-reported exposure to pornography and the extent of the belief that women would enjoy sexual violence. However, Garcia (1986) found no relation between reported use of nonviolent pornography and either attitudes about sexual aggression or more general sex role attitudes. Briere, Malamuth, and Check (1985) also found no significant relationships between pornography use and attitudes conducive to sexual aggression, although they did find a relation between pornography use and acceptance of domestic violence. Some correlational evidence that exposure to pictorial stimuli can produce undesirable effects is provided by the results of Bernstein, Huang, Teng, and Lin (1986), who asked males for attractiveness ratings of pictures of nude or partially nude women. They found that ratings by subjects who frequently used such stimuli were virtually unaffected by whether the model's face had been obliterated from the photo, whereas this factor did affect the ratings of subjects who were not pornography users. However, although this

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disregard is intuitively undesirable, it would not necessarily have other negative implications. In a classic experimental study, Zillman and Bryant (1982) reported the effects of exposing subjects to six 8-minute sexually explicit films one day a week for six weeks (a total of just under five hours). Following exposure, subjects recommended shorter sentences for the offender in a rape scenario and expressed much lower support for the women's liberation movement than did control subjects. Although females recommended longer sentences for the rapist than did males and expressed more support for the women's movement, there were no interactions between gender and the effects of exposure to pornography. Also, male subjects exposed to pornography scored considerably higher on an early version of what was later to become the calloused sex attitudes subscale of the Mosher and Sirkin (1984) Hypermasculinity Inventory. Subjects exposed to only half of the pornographic stimuli also showed similar significant effects, with means lying midway between the "massive exposure" group and controls. Zillman and Bryant's (1982) results are particularly notable in that both sexes succumbed to the attitudinal influences that the materials appeared to promote, and in that the effect sizes were very large. The mean recommended sentence for the (stranger) rapist, for instance, was only just over 5 years, as opposed to just under 10 years in the control groups. The authors concluded that "massive exposure to standard pornographic materials devoid of coercion and aggression seemed to promote such callousness (in particular the trivialization of rape)" (p. 19). The study has been criticized by Brannigan (1987), who incorrectly (Zillman and Bryant, 1987) speculated that the results could be due to differential subject attrition rates, and by Christensen (1986), whose "assertion that erotica inspires nothing but wholesome libidinal urges" has been discredited in detail by Zillman and Bryant (1986a, p. 187). However, it should be noted that Linz, Donnerstein, and Penrod (1987) cite two unpublished dissertations that have failed to replicate the results. Donnerstein and Linz (1986) argued that earlier studies showing no effect probably used too minimal exposure and that the Zillman and Bryant (1982) findings indicate that long-term exposure is harmful. They pointed out, however, that no studies have addressed the question of why--that is, of whether it is due to the sexual cues or to the image of the women (e.g., of being willing to engage in a variety of practices with a variety of partners) that it typically portrays. Some resolution of this question is suggested by the results of Linz et al. (1988). Subjects exposed to a diet of five commercial X-rated sex movies, one every two days, did not in general show the attitudinal effects observed by Zillman and Bryant (1982). Linz et al. argued that the amount and explicitness of sexual cues presented in the two studies were about the same, but that in the commercial films there was a much larger amount of nonsexual material involving women in normal activities. They thus suggest that "it is not the simple frequency of images of female promiscuity but the ratio of these images to other (not necessarily sexually related) images that results in changes in attitudes about women" (p. 767). A further effect of exposure in the Zillman and Bryant study, worth consideration although not directly related to sexual aggression, was to increase subjects' percep-

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tions (as compared to controls) of the frequency of various sexual practices. Although this actually produced more veridical estimates of the percentage of sexually active adults who engage in common sexual activities, it produced highly inflated estimates for less usual activities. For instance, subjects' mean estimate of the percentage of people who engage in group sex was 30%. This relation between focussed attention on a topic and a rise in its perceived likelihood appears to be a general cognitive phenomenon and is well documented for a variety of nonsexual events (e.g., Anderson, 1983; Gregory, Burroughs, & Ainslie, 1985; Levi & Pryor, 1987; Sherman, Cialdini, Schwartzman, & Reynolds, 1985). An unfortunate effect of this is that exposure to pornographic films can reduce the satisfaction of both males and females with the sexual attractiveness and performance of their current sexual partners and raise the perceived desirability of casual sexual encounters (Zillman & Bryant, 1988). A related effect is reported by Kenrick, Gutierres, and Goldberg (1989), who found that exposure to opposite sex centerfolds led male, but not female, subjects to rate a partner as less sexually attractive and to report less love for the partner. Zillman and Bryant used very explicit filmed pornography that could have differential effects to softer pornography and/or pornography in pictorial form. Wyer, Bodenhausen, and Gorman (1985) preexposed one group of subjects to cartoon and soft pornographic stimuli, aimed at priming sex-objectification of women, and then presented them with "testimony" from a rape victim. Sex-object priming compared with control stimuli, tended to increase males' attribution of responsibility to the victim and to decrease their assessments of her credibility; females showed the opposite pattern. However, there were several interactions with factors in the scenario that reduced the generalizability of these effects, and the priming stimuli had no effect on the perceived harm done to the victim. The study thus provides only limited support for the proposition that mild pictorial pornography will produce negative attitudinal effects in males. More work on the effects of this type of material would be useful, and it would also be interesting to investigate the effect of priming nonsexual conservative sex-role attitudes.

Behavioral Effects Both Briere and Malamuth (1983) and Demare et al. (1988) found no relation between males' self-reported likelihood of raping and reported pornography use, although Demare et al. did find such a relation for rape pornography. However, Jaffee and Strauss (1987) report a correlation of 0.53 across U.S. states between sex magazine circulation figures and reported rapes in 1980. This relation remained significant in a regression analysis including other rape predictors (percentages of population that were urban dwellers, divorced males, and below the poverty line). They pointed out that a more liberal sexual climate could lead both to a greater tendency to report rape and to greater sex magazine readership, but when a "Sexual Liberalism Index" based on attitudinal responses was included in the regression equation, it did not affect the rape-pornography relation. However, Jaffee and Strauss concluded that the relation was spurious in that "an orientation to gender roles and sexuality which can be summarized under the concept of 'hypermasculinity' " (p. 120) leads independently to both greater sex magazine consumption and more sexual aggression.

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"Mild" pictorial erotica has been shown to reduce laboratory intermale aggression sometimes (Ramirez, Bryant, & Zillman, 1982), and although filmed pornography increases aggression in angered subjects, so does equally arousing nonsexual material (Mueller & Donnerstein, 1981; Zillman, Bryant, Comisky, & Medoff, 1981). These results are not problematic as there is no particular reason to believe that pornography would lead to negative intermale attitudes or behavior, for aggressive pornography leads to heightened aggression against females but not males. However, there are no reports of increased laboratory aggression against women produced by pornography that is not specifically aggressive, and some studies have specifically failed to find this effect (e.g., Donnerstein, 1980; Donnerstein & Berkowitz, 1981; the unpublished experiment reported by Linz et al., 1987). Smith and Hand (1987) studied female students' reported frequencies of physical aggression from males before and after the showing of a pornographic film on campus. Reported aggression did not increase after the film and women who had associated with men who had seen the film did not report significantly more aggression than females associating with men who had not. However, the extent of the couples' prior association was not measured, and the number of females associating with males who had seen the film was only 38. There seems to be no other research that is directly relevant to the issue of whether nonviolent pornography can directly produce behavioral aggression. Some interesting indirect evidence comes from a study by McKenzie-Mohr and Zanna (1990), who found an increase in sexually motivated behavior, although this would not necessarily translate into increased sexually aggressive behavior. Male subjects viewed a nonviolent pornographic, or control, video and were then interviewed by a female about their transition to university. For gender schematic males (as measured by the Bern Sex Role Inventory), viewing the pornographic film led to the subjects choosing to sit closer to the female interviewer and to be rated by her as more sexually motivated. On a later recall task, a greater proportion of their recalls were about her physical appearance or dress. The pornographic video did not have these effects on subjects who were not masculine sex-typed. The authors concluded that the results "indicate that pornography is capable of priming gender schematic males to view women as sex objects" (p. 306). ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS Sherif (1980) has pointed out the potential dangers of inducing misconceptions about rape, arguing that the effectiveness of the debriefing procedure in Malamuth, Heim, and Feshbach (1980) should have been tested. This argument is particularly important as there is abundant evidence that information given during an experiment can have subsequent effects, even if totally discredited during debriefing (Anderson, Lepper, & Ross, 1980; Lepper, Ross, & Lau, 1986; Ross, Lepper, & Hubbard, 1975). However, although there are methodological problems involved in evaluating a debriefing (Malamuth, Feshbach, & Heim, 1980), Neil Malamuth and coworkers have paid particular attention to debriefing and have demonstrated its effectiveness. Sum-

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marizing their own research published elsewhere, Malamuth and Check (1983) write, "The findings of these experiments consistently show that the overall impact of research participation that includes exposure to rape portrayals followed by debriefings is a reduction in subjects' acceptance of rape myths" (p. 59). In one of the studies referred to (Malamuth and Check, 1984), subjects who read rape stories were given a specific rape debriefing, whereas subjects given consenting stories were given debriefing of "approximately equal length about the value of research about human sexuality" (p. 5). Ten days later (most) of the subjects participated in a "survey" asking for opinions about newspaper articles, one of which was about a rape. On several measures the groups did not differ, but where significant differences emerged about perceived causes of rape, the subjects who had received a rape depiction plus the debriefing showed more "healthy" attitudes. For instance, these subjects gave a lower rating to "women secretly wanting to be raped" as a cause. Donnerstein and Berkowitz (1981) also produced comparable positive attitudinal effects in (male) subjects tested "from 2 weeks to 4 months" after viewing a rape film plus debriefing. In an extended replication of Malamuth and Check, Check and Malamuth (1984) found that debriefed subjects saw the victim in the newspaper article as less responsible and the rapist as deserving a longer sentence, than did controls. This effect was limited to subjects who initially viewed an acquaintance rape depiction (comparable to the circumstances of the newspaper story) prior to debriefing about the myths involved. Exposure to a stranger rape or a consenting sex depiction prior to the rape debriefing produced no effects on judgments about the rape case. Because exposure to a specific rape depiction was necessary for the debriefing to be effective, this study seems to suggest that there can be "positive effects of participation in pornography experiments," and suggests that such procedures may "serve as a useful tool for changing subjects' attitudes about pornography and rape" (p. 29). As Check and Malamuth point out, however, the above finding does not legitimize all procedures. Exposure to rape depictions can lower self-esteem in females (Mayerson & Taylor, 1987; Schwartz & Brand, 1983), and although they report differential arousal for certain depictions, overall they report little arousal and a range of negative affect (e.g., Bond and Mosher, 1986; Malamuth, Heim, & Feshbach, 1980). Negative effects may be compounded by use of the second person or other manipulations that induce subjects to see themselves as actual participants. There is evidence, from nonsexual events, that simply imagining an event's happening to oneself increases the subjective probability of that event (e.g., Anderson, 1983; Gregory, Burroughs, & Ainslie, 1985), and such imagining has also been shown to produce actual changes in behavior (Gregory, Cialdini, & Carpenter, 1982). For males, there is clearly a possibility of inducing a heightened perceived likelihood that the subject himself could actually rape, and inducing females to imagine themselves in a rape scenario is likely to increase their perceived risk. I would not necessarily agree with Bond and Mosher (1986) when they classify increased "caution about the possibility of becoming a rape victim" as a positive effect because women already have a high fear of sexual assault (Riger & Gordon, 1981; Warr, 1985), which has been pointed out to be an important negative societal effect of rape on all women (e.g., Brownmiller, 1975). Because exposure to

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violent pornography is presumably unlikely to lead females to cause harm to others (as the films depict male on female aggression) and because the negative effects of explicit depictions on female viewers are well documented, there seems little point for further research on female subjects. With other types of pornography, specific debriefing about possible harmful effects is more problematic because there may be disagreement as to what "myths" it actually contains, or even about whether indeed there are any harmful effects. It is worth noting, however, that inclusion of any kind of stimuli in a study may implicitly convey the impression that the material is legitimate. Subjects should thus at least be informed that the experimenter does not necessarily approve of such materials and that the study is aimed at detecting any possible harmful effects that they may have. DISCUSSION

Interpretation of the Empirical Findings Several authors have pointed out that rape depictions include components that are likely to lead male viewers to "learn" that rape is reinforcing, in that the assailant typically goes unpunished and the victim is frequently depicted as enjoying the experience. Images of aggression against women, whether pornographic or not, appear to produce undesirable attitudinal effects and, at least in the short term, can trigger actual (laboratory) aggression. The fusion of sex and violence, either in an explicit rape depiction or in "slasher" movies, has particularly been shown to have a variety of adverse effects. However, a "defense" against the conclusion of a direct link between violent pornography and sexual aggression might be based on the argument that provoked aggression against females may not be an enduring effect, and on the argument that there is not necessarily a direct relation between attitudes supportive of aggression and the aggressive behavior itself. I discuss these viewpoints in the next two paragraphs. Even if aggressive proclivities provoked by violent pornography are short-lived, some viewers will have the opportunity to aggress during this time. Also, there is some reason to believe that effects may reemerge later in some circumstances. Berkowitz (1984) has argued that in addition to a learning effect, an effect of aggressive media stimuli is to "prime other semantically related thoughts, heightening the chances that viewers will have other aggressive ideas in this period" (p. 411). This interpretation implies several effects that are consistent with the research findings. First, priming will lead, by spreading activation, to the activation of thoughts that are more general than the specific stimulus. This can account for why violent pornography should produce heightened (ostensibly) nonsexual aggression against females in the laboratory. This seems a better accounting than modelling, which would not be expected to show such generalization. Second, undesirable thoughts can be primed only if they already exist, which suggests that violent pornography will be more likely to provoke undesirable behavior in certain males. There is indirect evidence for this in that males with more traditional attitudes toward women are more aroused by rape depictions, and more

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likely to report rape proclivity (e.g., Malamuth & Check, 1983, Malamuth et al., 1986). Also there was a comparable result (for nonaggressive stimuli) in the McKenzieMohr and Zanna study. A further implication of a priming explanation is that the effects will be limited to a fairly short duration, explaining the drop-off of behavioral effects. However, Berkowitz (1984) points out that retrieval cues for the original stimuli are likely to reactivate the priming effect. It is difficult to say what the exact retrieval cues would be, but it seems reasonable to believe that a sexual interaction in which the female attempts to limit the extent of sexual activity could well act as a retrieval cue for rape depictions that would directly lead to aggression. Given the prevalence of date rape (e.g., Koss, Dinero, Siebel, & Cox, 1988; Koss, Gidyz, & Wisniewski, 1987), this is not an unreasonable speculation. Similarly, rehearsing memories of the stimuli in particular situations would have similar effects. There will not necessarily be a direct relation between attitudes and behavior, although there is very good correlational evidence of a link between rape-supportive attitudes and self-reported rape proclivity (e.g., Briere & Malamuth, 1983; Check & Malamuth, 1985; Jenkins & Dambrot, 1987; Koss et al., 1985; Malamuth & Check, 1985; Muehlenhard & Linton, 1987; Rapaport & Burhart, 1984; Tieger, 1981). However, even if increases in rape supportive beliefs do not affect the behavior of the person concerned, they may still have undesirable effects that contribute to a social climate that is conducive to sexual aggression. Malamuth and Briere (1986) have pointed out that the effects on male attitudes will have a wider negative effect than actual sexual aggression because they may lead men who do not themselves sexually aggress to reinforce the behavior verbally in conversations with men who do, to increase their frequency of other forms of harassment, to have less feeling for the victims, and to be generally more discriminating against women. There is very little evidence for direct behavioral effects of pornography that is not specifically aggressive. The McKenzie-Mohr and Zanna (1990) results indicate that some behavioral effects can be produced, but we can only speculate as to the extent that these would have been translated into sexual aggression if the opportunity arose. The correlation between sex magazine circulation and rape reports (Jaffee & Strauss, 1987) does not necessarily imply a causal relation. Although there is some experimental laboratory evidence that exposure to (not specifically aggressive) pornography can have harmful attitudinal effects, the position is not entirely clear-cut, and Linz et al. (1987) cite two unpublished dissertations that have failed to replicate the Zillman and Bryant results. Correlational studies have not found consistent relationships between reported use and undesirable attitudes. The empirical evidence for a relation between nonviolent pornography and sexual aggression is thus debatable. Equally debatable, however, would be the assumption that it is possible to conclude that aggressive but not nonaggressive pornography is undesirable. Zillman and Bryant (1986b) exposed both male and female subjects to one hour of nonviolent pornographic videos per week for six weeks and, two weeks later, put subjects in a situation in which they could ostensibly view a video unobserved by the experimenters. Subjects viewed less "standard" pornography than controls and thus appear to have habitu-

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ated to it. However, they consumed a far greater amount of "bizarre" pornography (bondage, sadism, bestiality) than controls. The habituation thus led to a "graduation" to more aggressive pornography. Further, although some studies have concluded on the basis of content analyses that the proportion of sexually violent depictions in videos and magazines is low (e.g., Scott & Cuvelier, 1993), this level of analysis may be misleading. Cowan, Lee, Levy, & Snyder (1988) sampled X-rated videotapes from "rental stores with a family orientation" in California. Although only 6% of the explicit sex scenes depicted rape, 51% of the the videos depicted at least one rape and most of the sexually explicit scenes depicted themes of male dominance in some way. The authors report: "Reinforcement of the rape myth, that women enjoy being forced to engage in sex, occurred in 14% of the scenes, which showed women submitting to dominant, often coercive, acts and ultimately responding with acceptance and/or fervor" (p. 308). Such themes self-evidently foster beliefs known to be correlated with sexual aggression. Because pornography consumption can lead to a taste for more aggressive material and because in any case, truly nonaggressive pornography may be rare, it may be unwise to draw different conclusions about the harmful effects of aggressive and nonaggressive pornography. From the Cowan et al. results it appears that even pornography that does not specifically include images of violence directed against females may include more subtle themes of coercion and exploitation. It can also be argued that such pornography can often include degrading images of women as sex objects, which would be likely to affect more general sexist attitudes toward women. There is a well-documented relation between general traditional sex role attitudes and attitudes tolerant of sexual aggression (Burt, 1980; Check & Malamuth, 1983, 1985; Costin, 1985; Costin & Schwartz, 1987; Feild, 1978; Hail, Howard & Boergio, 1986; Jeffords, 1984; Mayerson & Taylor, 1987; Schwartz & Brand, 1983), and some evidence for a relation between traditional sex role attitudes and self-reported sexual aggression (Koss et al., 1985; Muehlenhard & Falcon, 1990; Muehlenhard & Linton, 1987; Peterson & Franzese, 1987). If, as Berkowitz (1984) suggests, media stimuli prime related concepts, it is thus possible that anything that promotes sexist attitudes focusing on women as sexual objects will indirectly influence sexual aggression related attitudes and, possibly, behaviors. The priming of the aggressive cognitions would presumably be weaker, however, because they lie further along the path of spreading activation. This may make them more difficult to detect in an empirical study. Little work has been carried out on the effect of the sort of sexual stimuli on common display, for instance, in newspapers. This again can be viewed as purveying the image of women as sex objects and interpreted as supporting sexist attitudes. The frequency and ubiquitousness of such material can be seen as contributing to a cultural climate that condones a variety of views and behaviors that are detrimental to women. However, it would be expected that there would be problems in empirically detecting these influences for two reasons. First, effects of any particular single instance would presumably be small, the effects stemming more from constant exposure, and second, subjects in a study would have been frequently exposed to such images and thus no true control group could be found. However, although general effects on the culture

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could probably never be empirically demonstrated for these reasons, we might still expect some specific short-term priming effects. The Wyer et al. (1985) results provide some evidence that undesirable effects can be detected with "milder" pornography. CENSORSHIP

There is evidence to suggest that exposure to violent pornographic images is quite common. Garcia (1986) surveyed the reported pornography exposure of 115 male undergraduates and found that over half the sample reported having been exposed to detailed descriptions of both rapes and violent sex in magazines, and violent sexual activities in both books and films. Over two-thirds of the sample reported exposure to detailed depictions of rapes in both books and films. Demare et al. (1988) found that 35% of their 205 male subjects reported using rape pornography in the last year. If such material is harmful, then the extent of the problem is widespread, and it is of relevance to consider the question of whether exposure should be curbed. In 1986, C. Everett Koop, the U.S. surgeon general, commissioned the Workshop on Pornography and Public Health, which included people with extensive research experience in the area, such as Edward Donnerstein, Neil Malamuth, and Doll Zillmann. This workshop fed the conclusions of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography. In a brief summary of the consensus conclusions, Koop (1987) reported: 1 think it is fair to say that, based on these consensus statements, pornography does stimulate attitudes and behavior that lead to gravely negative consequences for individuals and for society. These outcomes impair the mental, emotional, and physical health of children and adults and may thus contribute significantly to the morbidity burden in our society. (p. 945) On the other hand Linz et al. (1987) are more cautious in their interpretation of this same workshop, stressing the limitations of laboratory research and pointing out that there is little evidence that exposure to sexually violent material leads to aggressive or assaultive behavior "outside the confines of the laboratory" (p. 950). Malamuth (1989b) has similarly distanced himself from Koop's conclusions, arguing that the social scientists involved endorsed statements about the relation between rape, pornography and aggression but did not endorse statements to the effect that aggressive pornography was thus a significant contributor to actual crime. Similarly, Donnerstein and Linz (1986) write: "Males in our society have callous attitudes about rape. But where do these attitudes come from? Are the media, and in particular pornography the cause? We would be reluctant to place the blame on the media. If anything, the media act to reinforce already existing attitudes and values regarding women and violence. They are a contributor, but only one of many" (p. 616). Given that Dolf Zillman was also opposed to restrictions (Zillman & Bryant, 1987), it appears that the final report of the Attorney General's Commission was at odds with the views of the researchers on whose work it was primarily based.

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Page (1989, 1991) pointed out that these workers have in the past clearly expressed the view that at least violent pornography is harmful, and commented, "On the basis of present evidence, surely psychology does not support the view that violent pornography has no adverse effects whatsoever, or that it is flattering and beneficial to women" (1989, p. 579). There is obviously a conflict between the possible harm that material may cause and the rights of individuals to view it (see Linz, Penrod, & Donnerstein, 1986, for a discussion of the legal issues involved), but there does seem to be a strong case for censorship of material for which the empirical evidence of undesirable effects is fairly convincing. The argument for censorship is eloquently put by Vivar (1982), who writes: "The idea conveyed by such pornography is that violence perpetrated on a woman is indistinguishable from sex and is just as permissible. It is an incitement to hate and destroy an entire class of human beings. Violent pornography is so morally repugnant and has so little social value that we, as a society, are right in rejecting it" (pp. 69-70). However, although peoples' opinions on censorship generally tend to be governed by the extent to which they see the materials as more harmful than beneficial (e.g., Lottes et al., 1993), some people, notably writers supporting FACT (Feminist Anticensorship Taskforce) are strongly opposed to censorship even though they consider materials to be degrading and harmful to women (see e.g., Cowan, 1992; Rodgerson & Semple, 1990; Segal, 1990, for overviews of this debate). It seems that the social science researchers are in broad agreement with this perspective in that they have previously expressed views about the possible harmful effects of some pornography but disassociated themselves from the conclusions of the Attorney General's Commission favoring greater restrictions. There are two particular reasons for this on which the researchers and FACT would generally agree. First, although some pornographic materials may contribute to sexual aggression, they are not the only things that do so, and banning pornographic materials will not stop violence against women. Second, the set of materials that would be included in increased restrictions is unlikely to match the set of materials that are potentially harmful. Linz et al. (1987) make the very important point that given the research on aggressive images, focussing on pornography may lead us to overlook other media outlets. As they point out: These ideas about rape and sexual violence are so pervasive in our culture that it is shortsighted to call them the exclusive domain of violent pornography, much less the domain of the broader category of legally obscene materials. In fact, one would not have to search further than a local bookstore to find numerous violent murder mysteries that reinforce this point. It is interesting to note that in a recent content analysis of detective magazines, Deitz, Harry and Hazelwood (1986) found that 76% of the covers depicted domination of women and 38% depicted women in bondage. (p. 952) The dissemination of sexually aggressive attitudes thus extends from pornography through extremely violent stimuli lacking explicit sexual elements that would be labeled pornographic to widely consumed "normal" films and reading matter. This leads

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to the question of where the line is to be drawn if certain materials are to be banned. There may be little justification in censoring aggressive pornography but not the sort of films studied by Malamuth and Check (1981) or even other common books and films. If one wanted to remove all such undesirable influences, the list would be very long, but there is no good evidence at present that one form is more harmful than another. It could be, for instance, that less extreme depictions of violence against women contain more subtle messages that have more impact because they are presented in a normal context. A similar dilemma applies to pornography in general. Although conveying sexist messages, the extent of these is not necessarily related to sexual explicitness. A sexually explicit depiction of a consenting, egalitarian, sexual interaction may convey no harmful message at all, whereas the semiclothed "pinups" in newspapers or advertising can be seen as conveying subtle and pervasive sexist messages. It is the former rather than the latter, however, that would be banned if censorship were widened. Thus again, the where to draw the line question is problematic. There is no particular evidence that the explicitness of the sexual cues in any kind of pornography is the important determinant of undesirable influences. Thus any form of censorship would not necessarily apply to the materials that were actually the worst offenders. In any case, such stimuli are not unique causes of sexism and aggression against women, although they may enhance it, but are simply one of many reflections of a patriarchal culture. They may be undesirable symptoms, but they are not the disease. NOTES Date of acceptance for publication: 3 June 1994. Address for correspondence: Paul Pollard, Department of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, U.K. 1. Murphy, Krisak, Stalgaitis, and Anderson (1984) interpreted similar results as bringing the physiological (phallometric test) measures into question, although they do mention the (less severe) type o f offender population as another possible factor. It does in fact appear to be the case that physiologically measured arousal can fairly easily be faked. Hall et al. (1988) and Hall (1989) found that 75-80% of their sexual offender subjects were able, when requested, to completely inhibit arousal to a taped passage previously found to be the most arousing for them. Freund, Watson, and Rienzo (1988) have shown that undergraduate subjects can also fake differential preferences. 2. Malamuth and Check (1983) point out that a problem with using physiological measurement in nonoffender volunteer samples is that its use in an experiment tends to attract a deviant set of volunteers (see pp. 59-60). Malamuth and Check (1985) found that volunteers, compared with nonvolunteers, showed more positive attitudes towards future engaging in homosexual acts, anal intercourse, group sex, watching lesbian acts, and use of force against a woman. They were also more likely to be virgins. Use of self-report measures avoids the volunteer problem, although reports may obviously be subject to distortion in cases where arousal would be considered socially undesirable (although this is little comparative disadvantage if the phallometric test is also easily faked). Malamuth, Helm, and Feshbach (1980) discuss the validity of self-report measures on page 402 and cite various studies that have found that self-report and physiological measures correlate highly (together with other studies that have shown that physiological measurement can be distorted). In general, there appears to be no measure of arousal that is guaranteed to be free of selfpresentation effects. It is probably the case that whatever the measurement used and whatever the sample, studies finding more or less equal arousal to rape and consenting depictions can be relied on more than studies showing more socially desirable responses.

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