Gert Hald and Theis Lange, of the University of Copenhagen, and Neil Malamuth, University of California, were looking to establish how viewing pornography affects attitudes towards women. They asked 200 Danish adults about their past pornography consumption and assessed their personality for their agreeableness. The participants were then exposed to hardcore pornography in a laboratory and evaluated how it affected a variety of sexist attitudes. There was no association between sexist attitudes and porn consumption among women, they found. However, findings initially showed that men who had increased porn consumption had more negative attitudes towards women. Men with low levels of agreeableness displayed increased hostile sexist attitudes after being exposed to hardcore porn in the laboratory, which was brought about by increases in sexual arousal to the pornographic material.
First of all, I find this study remarkable since it took place in Denmark: which was the first country in the world to legalize pornography. There are few regulations in Denmark concerning porn, therefore zoo-films, involving humans and animals, are freely produced and distributed. In addition, although child pornography is illegal - depictions with children over the age of 15 are not. Consequently, even in a nation that has a long history of porn saturation, in Denmark, men are still feeling the destructive influence of porn. In a certain respect, this phenomenon is reflected in the overall laxity that the Danish government has taken in terms of porn: because the population has been so corrupted (and desensitized) by porn that it created a need for more intense and deviant forms of pornography - necessitating a near absence of any government restrictions. In the US, we are now seeing the same problem as very sick forms of porn (such as extreme bondage) have become acceptable. In conclusion, as the study supports, some can remain unphased by porn, but others are seriously impacted. Children, who were not part of the study, are the unknown quotient. Are we grooming the future generation of serial killers?