Pornography and attitudes supporting violence against women: revisiting the relationship in nonexperimental studies

Abstract

A meta-analysis was conducted to determine whether nonexperimental studies revealed an association between men's pornography consumption and their attitudes supporting violence against women. The meta-analysis corrected problems with a previously published meta-analysis and added more recent findings. In contrast to the earlier meta-analysis, the current results showed an overall significant positive association between pornography use and attitudes supporting violence against women in nonexperimental studies. In addition, such attitudes were found to correlate significantly higher with the use of sexually violent pornography than with the use of nonviolent pornography, although the latter relationship was also found to be significant. The study resolves what appeared to be a troubling discordance in the literature on pornography and aggressive attitudes by showing that the conclusions from nonexperimental studies in the area are in fact fully consistent with those of their counterpart experimental studies. This finding has important implications for the overall literature on pornography and aggression.