Viewing violent pornography increases the likelihood of sexual aggression among college students. This is especially true if the viewer believes the video reflects reality and thinks their friend is engaging in a victim-blaming attitude. These findings, published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, suggest that educational programs must teach young people to critically evaluate explicit media. The results also highlight the need to challenge harmful social norms within peer groups.
When young people form romantic relationships, they construct a mental blueprint for how intimate encounters should unfold. Psychologists refer to these blueprints as sexual scripts. These expectations are formed by personal experiences and external influences such as explicit internet videos and conversations with friends. Mainstream adult content contains a large amount of physical aggression, such as slapping and choking, so young people are routinely exposed to media that combines violence and sexual pleasure.
Melissa S. de Roos, a researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, led a team that studied how this violent ingestion interacts with a person’s social environment to influence their behavior. This study is based on theory that suggests that explicit media alone does not automatically produce violent behavior. Instead, a combination of cultural messages and social networks coalesce to guide individual behavior.
This study focused on two specific factors that can alter the effects of violent media. The first is perceived realism. This concept refers to the extent to which a person believes adult videos reflect real life. The second factor is the acceptance of rape myths within the circle of friends.
Rape myths contribute significantly to a culture that condones sexual violence. These are false beliefs that blame targets of assault or excuse perpetrators, such as the idea that people exaggerate the effects of nonconsensual touching. People who believe these myths often fail to recognize the situations in which people are forced. Some people use these stories to justify their persistence after their partner expresses a desire to stop dating.
These false narratives rely heavily on the idea of ”real rape” scenarios. This is a stereotype that depicts assault only as a violent attack by an unknown assailant in a dark alley. The pervasiveness of this stereotype allows people to ignore instances of assault or verbal coercion by someone they know. This gives individuals a mental loophole to excuse behavior that actually violates the agreement.
To collect data, the researchers distributed an online survey to university students in the Netherlands. The final sample included 677 participants, approximately two-thirds female and one-third male. Participants answered detailed questions about their media habits. They indicated their age when they first started using it, their average viewing time per week, and their specific genre preferences.
Participants rated how often they watched content featuring different acts. These genres included traditional acts along with group encounters, fetish material, and explicit depictions of violence and coercion. Next, respondents rated how acceptable explicit media was and how realistic they thought the material was.
The study then asked participants to imagine a private conversation with three close friends. Based on this imagined scenario, respondents rated the extent to which their friends agreed with statements condoning sexual coercion. For example, participants guessed whether their friend believed the attacker was simply absorbed in an intimate moment.
Finally, the researchers asked participants about their behavior using a behavioral questionnaire. The survey asked whether students had ever had unwanted sexual contact, attempted coercion, or threats of force while attending college. The survey categorized these behaviors into specific physical acts, allowing researchers to categorize respondents based on the severity of the behavior.
The results revealed clear differences in how men and women engage with explicit content. Male participants reported watching adult content much more frequently than female participants. Men had more positive attitudes toward content and were much more likely to report watching content that featured violence or coercive scenarios.
In addition to differences in media habits, male respondents perceived their friend groups to be more tolerant of victim-blaming myths compared to female respondents. Overall, peer acceptance of these myths was relatively low across the sample. The exact wording of responses still shows a gender gap, with women believing their friends strongly disagree with excuses for violence, while men believe their friends only mildly disagree.
Regarding aggressive behavior, male students who viewed violent and explicit media had a higher risk of committing sexual aggression. This association was even stronger when men viewed adult videos as accurate depictions of real life. If male students considered the video to be highly realistic, their overall risk of reporting abusive behavior was higher.
The association between media consumption and aggressive behavior was also amplified when male students believed that a close friend had accepted a false story about assault. If a man watches violent videos and feels that his peers condone coercion, he is more likely to commit a crime. This pattern suggests that adult videos are reinforcing pre-existing victim-blaming attitudes that are subtly tolerated among some male friend circles.
The research team emphasized the importance of peer dynamics, especially in male-only social circles. Within these groups, harmful myths can be subtly reinforced by jokes and not condemning bad behavior. This lack of vocal opposition can lead to a phenomenon known as pluralistic ignorance. In these situations, you mistakenly assume that your friend supports victim-blaming ideas just because no one is actively opposing them.
The trends for female students were completely different. For the women in the study, simply viewing violent and explicit content was not independently associated with abusive behavior. The association between viewing violent content and sexual aggression emerged only among women who believed that their close friends were receptive to harmful stories about violence. For women, the social environment appears to have a large influence on whether aggressive media consumption leads to physical behavior.
Researchers observed an interesting discrepancy in the way people report their behavior. The survey asked participants about specific physical acts of violence or incapacitation that legally constitute rape. It also included another item: “Do you think you have ever raped someone?”
Many acknowledged specific acts of coercion but rejected labeling. Of the men who met the behavioral criteria for rape, about two-thirds denied ever raping anyone when asked directly. Rejection rates for women were even higher, with approximately 87% rejecting the label despite their reported behavior. The authors suggest that this highlights how perpetrators fail to recognize their actions and instead rely on false ‘real rape’ narratives.
Because this study relied on data collected at one point in time, the results cannot prove that watching violent media compels people to commit violence. It is quite possible that people who already have a basic interest in aggressive behavior are actively seeking out media that suit their tastes. People with naturally aggressive tendencies may be naturally attracted to violent videos. To better understand this timeline, researchers recommend looking at how media habits change with behavior over several years.
The researchers note that their findings offer practical ideas for preventing violence on college campuses. Educational programs should focus on improving media literacy. If instructors can teach young people to view adult videos as fictional entertainment rather than real-world instructional guides, they may be able to reduce the impact of violent content.
Prevention strategies should also target behaviors within social groups. Interventions should encourage people to actively counter victim-blaming when talking to friends, as peers’ beliefs significantly alter the risk of aggression. Changing social expectations within peer groups limits the normalization of violence and removes the social cover that allows people to make excuses for coercive behavior.
Women need to be included in campus initiatives. Although women perpetrate sexual violence at lower rates than men, this study shows that female students are still highly susceptible to peer influence that promotes harmful ideas. Interventions that build healthy communication skills and teach students to recognize coercion will benefit all members of the university community.
The study, “Modifying Effects on the Association between Violent Pornography and Sexual Aggression,” was authored by Melissa S. De Ruth and Emma Ferrando.
