Sexuality and the media

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Sexuality and the media
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An unusual part of American culture

• Sexuality is less accepted than violence

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Why?

• Negative effects of sex
• However, violence certainly has its negative
  effects
• Puritan morality
• More apparent than real
• Belief in the innocence of children

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• A TV network censored a sequence of John
  Steinbecks The Red Pony, which showed a mare
  giving birth, but broadcast the rather hideous
  sequence from The Godfather showing a beheaded
  horse.

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• We now arrive at what turns out to bepossibly
  through a kind of defaultthe most pervasive and
  consistent influence upon youth in the area of
  sexualitythe mass media.
• Internet campus

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• Each year, a typical teen-ager views nearly
  15,000 sexual references, innuendoes and jokes on
  television, of which fewer than 170 deal with
  abstinence, birth control, sexually transmitted
  diseases or pregnancy. (CNN)

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• Television exposes children to adult behaviors,
  like sex. But it usually does not show the risks
  and results of early sexual activity. On TV,
  sexual activity is shown as normal, fun,
  exciting, and without any risks. Your child may
  copy what she sees on TV in order to feel more
  grown up.
• (American Academy of Pediatrics)

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Source Alan Guttmacher Institute
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who have had sex at 15 to 19 years
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Source Alan Guttmacher Institute
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Source Alan Guttmacher Institute
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Source Alan Guttmacher Institute
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Teen pregnancy outcomes
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Teen sources of sex information(Time/CNN poll,
1998)

• Friends 45
• TV 29
• Parents 7
• Sex Educ 3

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Number of sex partners in past 12 months (adult )
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Frequency of sex in past 12 months (adult)
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How often think about sex
Source Michael, Gagnon, Laumann, and Kolata
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Percentage purchasing autoerotic materials in
past 12 months
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The nature of sex on TV

• Not explicit
• Innuendos are rampant
• Often occurs in humorous context

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Whos doing it?

• References to premarital and extramarital sexual
  encounters outnumbered references to sex between
  spouses by at least 61 (Greenberg Hofshire,
  2000)
• In soap operas, as high as 241 for unmarried v.
  married partners (Lowry Towles, 1989)
• 321 in R-rated movies with teens (Greenberg et
  al., 1993)
• Nudity occurred in all R-rated films in sample,
  with female nudity outnumbering male nudity 41

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Trends

• 35 increase in sexual content in soap operas
  between 1985 1994
• (Greenberg DAlessio, 1985 Greenberg
  Busselle, 1996)
• Also, more themes of negative consequences of
  sex, rejection of sexual advances, and portrayals
  of rape

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Arousal

• Men are typically more aroused than women are,
  especially in response to sexually violent or
  dehumanizing materials
• (Harris and Scott, 2002)
• Sexual violence may be especially arousing to sex
  offenders and other violence-prone men and even
  to normal men if the victim is portrayed as
  being aroused by the assault

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Men and women differ in their response to sexual
film

• Men and women usually differ in the intensity of
  their self-reported sexual arousal to sexual film
  clips, with women reporting lower levels. Also,
  men and women commonly report different emotional
  reactions to the presentation of sexual stimuli
  Men report more positive and women more negative
  feelings.

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• Men and women were presented with 20 short film
  clips depicting heterosexual interactions. Half
  of the clips were previously selected by women
  the other half by men.

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• FINDINGS
• Although overall, men and women differed in
  sexual arousal to the sexual films, this
  difference was most pronounced for the
  male-selected film clips. Gender differences in
  arousal were small to absent for the clips
  selected by women. Also, men and women
  experienced higher levels of sexual arousal to
  clips selected for individuals of their own
  gender.

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Arousal

• The degree of arousal is not highly correlated to
  the degree of explicitness of the media
• Sometimes cutting away and allowing the
  individual to fill in the details with his/her
  own ideas is more arousing than witnessing
  explicit portrayals

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Effects of exposure to weekly pornographic films

• Less satisfaction with the affection, physical
  appearance, sexual curiosity, and sexual
  performance of their real-life partners.
• Saw sex without emotional involvement as being
  relatively more important than did control group.
  They also showed greater acceptance of
  premarital and extramarital sex and placed lesser
  value on marriage and monogamy.
• Less desire to have children and greater
  acceptance of male dominance and female
  submission.
• Zillman Bryant, 1988

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Male attitudes toward sexual violence

• Between 25 and 57 of college men reported that
  they might rape if they were sure they would not
  get caught.
• (Check, 1985 Malamuth, Haber Feshbach, 1980)
• Consumption of violent pornography, but not
  nonviolent pornography, predicted self-rated
  likelihood to rape (Demare et al., 1988).

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Availability of pornography and sexual violence

• Research results are inconsistent
• High rates of availability of pornography and
  sexual depictions in Netherlands, Japan even
  though sexual violence levels very low
• Predicted pattern shows up elsewhere

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Context

• Cultural context affects response to identical
  portrayals
• National Geographic and bare breasts
• Expectations in addressing the text
• Conditions of exposure
• With your friends, children, spouse

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Portrayal of victims of sexual assault

• Malamuth (1984) found that men who viewed scenes
  of violent pornography showed a more callous
  attitude toward rape and women in general,
  especially if the women victims in the film were
  portrayed as coming to orgasm as the result.
• Men, though not women, were more aroused by a
  rape scene than a consenting sex scene, but only
  if the victim was shown as enjoying the rape and
  coming to orgasm. The men were not aroused if the
  woman was shown to be terrorized.

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Effects of sexually violent films

• Participants who saw a film where a woman is
  attacked, stripped, tied up and raped, and
  enjoyed it administered more shocks to a female
  confederate of the experimenter, but not to a
  male confederate (who had earlier angered the
  subjects).
• (Donnerstein Berkowitz, 1981)
• Participants with repeated exposure to sexually
  explicit media recommended shorter prison terms
  for rapists (Zillman Bryant, 1984)

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Exposure to pornography

• Exposure to pornography (especially violent
  pornography) tends to lead to acceptance of rape
  myths
• (Allen, Emmers, Gebhardt, and Giery, 1995)

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Slasher films

• College men shown one slasher film per day for a
  week
• Filled out questionnaires evaluating the days
  film and some personality measures
• Over the week the men became less depressed, less
  annoyed, and less anxious in response to the
  films. The films were gradually rated as more
  enjoyable, humorous, and socially meaningful.
  They were seen as progressively less violent,
  offensive, and degrading to women. The violent
  episodes in general and rape scenes in particular
  were rated as less frequent.

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Follow-up

• The participants in the slasher movie experiment
  later observed a rape trial. They rated the
  victim as less physically and emotionally injured
  than did a control group. (Linz et al., 1984)
• A similar study found that portrayals of a man
  raped by a man (Deliverance) and of a woman raped
  by a man (Straw Dogs) led to desensitization
  toward a female rape victim at trial among men
  exposed to the depictions but not to women.
  Exposure to depictions of male aggression toward
  men and women (Die Hard 2) and to a nonaggressive
  action film (Days of Thunder) did not have the
  same effect.

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• Brand recall was 17 higher for participants who
  watched a "neutral" program than for those who
  saw a violent show. And recall was 21 higher for
  viewers watching neutral shows versus a highly
  sexual program.
• What if you juice up the ads with sex and
  violence? Well, Bushman and Bonacci thought of
  that and found that it didn't seem to change the
  results. The violent ads were 20 less memorable
  and the sexy ones 18 less memorable than the
  neutral ads.