From: NewNowNext
A new study out of the University of Oklahoma shows that porn consumption might have an impact on changes in religiousness.
The study, conducted by Samuel Perry, tracked the porn-watching habits of 1,134 adults over the course of six years, from 2006 to 2012. Perry also tracked each participant’s degree of religiousness with each intake of data in order to definitively determine the impact both variables had on one another.
In the abstract for the study, Perry notes that while most researchers acknowledge that higher levels of religiousness lead to lower levels of porn consumption, no empirical research had ever been done to investigate the opposite, that higher levels of porn consumption might lead to lower levels of overall religiousness.
To interrogate this hypothesis, Perry distributed questionnaires to the participants a few times each year asking them to mark their level of porn consumption at the time and to answer a few questions about their religious practices.
After gathering the data, analysis showed that even after controlling for age and gender, more frequent use of pornography in 2006 was related to lower levels of religiousness in 2012. This stood true even after accounting for levels of religiousness in 2006, which demonstrates pornography’s clear impact on religiousness.
The relationship between porn and religion is complex, though, as the data shows that porn use was related to decreased levels of religiousness only up until the rate of consumption became more frequent than once a week. At this point, researchers found that increases in porn use actually led to increases in religiousness.
This finding baffled Perry and his team, though they suggest in their conclusion that frequent porn users might also experience higher levels of religiousness as a means to cope with or justify their porn habits. They further hypothesize that some frequent porn users might turn to religion to atone for a behavior for which others might shame them.
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