Author:

Keywords:

Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities, Communication, Film, Radio, Television, Psychology, Applied, Film, Radio & Television, Psychology, PORNOGRAPHY, EXPOSURE, ATTITUDES, STUDENTS, BEHAVIOR, ONLINE, PERCEPTIONS, EXPERIENCES, DISCOURSE, BLACK, 1701 Psychology, 1902 Film, Television and Digital Media, 2001 Communication and Media Studies, Communication & Media Studies, 5201 Applied and developmental psychology, 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology, 5205 Social and personality psychology

Abstract:

Little is known about how exposure to sexually explicit Internet material (SEIM) relates to a performance-focused orientation toward sex. Based on a three-wave panel study among adolescents (N = 1,022), we found that watching SEIM predicted a sexual performance orientation from Wave (W) 2 to W3, but not from W1 to W2. A sexual performance orientation at W2 predicted adolescents’ exposure to SEIM at W3. The relationship between exposure to SEIM and a sexual performance orientation was explained by a two-step mediation model. The more adolescents were exposed to SEIM at W1, the more they enjoyed consuming this content at W2. In turn, enjoyment of SEIM (W2) predicted adolescents’ perceived utility of SEIM (W2). This increased perceived utility at W2 predicted a more intense performance orientation towards SEIM at W3. Within this two-step model, we also found full support for a reciprocal relationship between using SEIM (W1/W2/W3) and enjoyment of SEIM (W1/W2/W3) and partial support for a reciprocal relationship between sexual performance orientation (W2) and perceived utility of SEIM (W3).