Abstract

Pornography has increasingly become a hot topic of discussion in the United States, likely due to its increasing rate of consumption. Recent scholarship has indicated the need to account for factors such as masturbation and sexual desire discrepancy when conducting pornography research. The current study isolated the influence pornography use had on those in heterosexual romantic relationships (N=713 couples) by parsing out the effects of sexual desire discrepancy and masturbation. This was done by using a series of nested actor-partner interdependence models (APIM) to see how the relationships between pornography use and sexual satisfaction changed in each model. Masturbation and sexual desire discrepancy were also investigated as potential moderators for the APIMs to explore the effects the levels of these variables had on that relationship. Results from these analyses demonstrated that the best-fitting model included measures of masturbation, sexual desire discrepancy, and sexual engagement (i.e., controls for the values making up sexual desire discrepancy), and that adding each of these variables to the model significantly changed pornography use's actor and partner effects. Masturbation and sexual desire discrepancy were not found to moderate these relationships. A discussion of the research implications of these findings, the limitations of this study, future directions for research, and clinical implications of this study are also presented.

Degree

MS

College and Department

Family, Home, and Social Sciences; Family Life

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2021-07-19

Document Type

Thesis

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd11789

Keywords

actor-partner interdependence model, pornography, masturbation, sexual desire discrepancy

Language

english

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