This Is Porn Man

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This Is Porn Man
by Joshua Scott and Anonymous Published: Oct 16, 2012
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How porn rewires your brain, hijacks your libido, and threatens your sex life (and just might improve it, too)
For privacy reasons, certain identifying characteristics of people in this story have been changed.
I was 15 years old when I discovered my father’s porn habit. It was after midnight, a school night; The blue-green glow of his computer monitor spilled from the crack beneath his door.
I let myself in, assuming he was working, and instead found him feverishly masturbating to the images on the screen.
It’s a moment as ingrained in my mind as I imagine the porn is in his: He was perched, naked, in his green swivel chair, which he had covered with one of my mom’s best bath towels. He looked angry.
Shortly afterward, my mom filed for divorce, and I branded pornography as my father’s—or perhaps all men’s—evil vice.
I couldn’t understand his desire for the naked pretzel women, contorting into yogalike poses on his computer screen. Or why his porn habit—which, my mother later told me, spanned my parents’ entire 20-year marriage—seemed to be worth more to him than his family.
I’ve seen my father only a handful of times since he left. And I’ve watched hard-core porn just once, in a dorm room. But years later, a scene from the film I watched with friends—a woman bent over, her pointy breasts swinging like pendulums—surfaced in my dreams .
It reignited the fear I first felt after the encounter with my father: Does porn somehow invade the deepest recesses of men’s minds? Of women’s? And if so, does every man carry a mental cache of unerasable erotic images. 
As an adult, this anxiety has carried over into my relationships; even a Victoria’s Secret catalog seems threatening, like a gateway drug to cruder desires. I know intellectually that porn addiction is actually quite rare. That most men can look at it and still lust after living, breathing, imperfect women. Yet I still have a nagging fear that the naked images will displace me.
For years, I lumped all men who looked at porn into one perverse Pandora’s box—younger, equally warped versions of my father.
But then I became a sex researcher and writer. (Psychologists could have a field day with that career path, I’m sure.) I’ve spent hundreds of hours sifting through studies in an effort to find out what motivates men, what penetrates their brains.
And the more I’ve learned, the more my earlier view seemed oversimplified.
Part of my job is to equip men with the knowledge they need to improve their sex lives. Yet my understanding of pornography—a part of most men’s sexual repertoires, I know—was shaped entirely by my personal, traumatic experience. Then I realized how remiss, even irresponsible, this was.
So I turned to science for answers. And as I dropped references to this story among my guy friends, they were fascinated—and worried. Turns out, I’m not the only one who wonders what life in the age of porn is doing to us.
From what I know now, based on my interviews with nearly a dozen experts and from studying a stack of studies about 8 inches high, I’ll never look at pornography the same way again. And I can make an educated guess: You won’t want to, either.
Many psychologists believe that men have evolved to pursue lusty, busty women who are willing to engage in casual sex. According to Paul Wright, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Indiana University who researches the social aspects of sex, that may be because a woman’s appearance can give more clues to her reproductive potential than a man’s can.
However, Emory University research suggests that men and women are similarly interested in visual sexual stimuli, but what they find sexually interesting definitely divides along gender lines.
“Men prefer novelty, while women are more interested in stable dynamics,” says study author Heather Rupp, Ph.D., now a research fellow at the Kinsey Institute.
Pornography solves a primal problem for men: It offers easy access to commitment-free sex with multiple partners. Throughout human evolution, a man’s reproductive success increased if he inseminated as many women as possible—ideally those who were young and beautiful, since both qualities signaled fertility and health.
Women’s success, on the other hand, would have been enhanced by selecting men with both resources and an interest in parenting, says Wright.
“Men still have instinctual preferences today because those preferences served a reproductive purpose for their ancestors,” he says. “Men’s modern environment has changed dramatically, but their evolved sexual preferences have not.”
A man’s physical response to porn—faster heart rate, increased bloodflow, erection—is preceded by a deeper neurological process, which scientists have attempted to capture through brain scans. The results have varied widely.
“There are so many moving parts in this equation,” says William Struthers, Ph.D., a biopsychologist and the author of Wired for Intimacy. “How old is the man? Is he involved in a sexual relationship? Is he regularly masturbating? People think sex is always the same. It’s not. You look at food very differently when you’re hungry compared with when you’ve just finished a meal.”
(If you want in-depth instructions on how to give her the best sex of her life—check out How to Pleasure a Woman , the Men’s Health guide to becoming a master lover.)
Even so, a few broad themes have consistently emerged. First is the cognitive component—visual processing, attention, and reward.
“Pornographic images seem to activate a man’s visual system in a manner that goes beyond just looking at trees or even people,” says Struthers. “It’s almost like a high-definition signal compared with a standard signal.” Once this signal—Tori Black in the nude, say—hits the male antenna, the mesolimbic (reward) system kicks in, producing a rush of feel-good dopamine.
This can reinforce the behavior much in the same way that drugs like cocaine would—which is perhaps the most widely exploited argument against porn.
“Guys freak out when they think porn might be ‘rewiring’ their brains,” says Struthers. “The reality is, our brains are regularly being ‘rewired’—we wouldn’t learn anything otherwise.” Perhaps more troublesome is what occurs after that pleasurable surge: the activation of brain regions tied to motivation, which drives men to seek sexual release.
At this point, “several brain regions, called the higher cortical component, have to decide, ‘What's the best way to deal with this?’” says Struthers. “The problem is, these cortical systems can shut off—that is, they may receive less blood as the visual and arousal systems become more active.”
“Essentially the decision-making system is turning itself over to the experience; it’s almost like the men are hypnotized,” he says. “This is the classic male stereotype: When men think with what’s below, they don’t make good decisions.”
Or, the decisions are made for them. 
Scientists have linked the motivating power of porn to the “mirror neuron system,” a part of the brain that compels us to simulate action we see other humans perform.
In a 2008 study in the journal NeuroImage , men who watched erotic videos experienced mirror neuron activation and reported a desire to replicate the sex acts they saw. The stronger their mirror neuron response, the harder their erections tended to be. (This parroting effect may be more pronounced in response to videos, which have more action cues than photographs do.)
“When you’re viewing something sexual, the mirror neuron system enables you to vicariously experience it,” says Struthers.
However, simply watching isn’t sufficient to elicit an orgasm . This is why the need to masturbate or to seek an actual sex partner becomes so overpowering that men can’t resist it.
Man’s neurological response to porn is especially strong because the content suits men’s sexual interests much more than it suits women’s, according to Rupp. The erotic depictions imitate the casual sex men crave, but without the threat of disease or unwanted pregnancy.
This makes it incredibly titillating—and it’s made even more so by the cornucopia of content available on the Internet. The Playboy centerfold era is over.
In an Indiana University study, men said they were most aroused by hard-core, lesbian, female-only, amateur, and “barely legal” pornography. (Men view these genres about twice as often as women do.)
“With hard-core pornography, you’re able to become aroused more quickly and intensely,” says Ana Bridges, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Arkansas. “When there is more action, more intensity of emotion—it doesn’t necessarily have to be a positive emotion; it can just be intensity—then arousal increases.”
Marital therapist Jill Manning, Ph.D., author of What’s the Big Deal about Pornography? , adds, “Internet pornography is especially stimulating to the brain because you have the feeling of being engaged directly.”
Recent research suggests that this flood of visual stimulation may amplify men’s evolved drive for casual sex. In a recent study, for example, Wright found that men who use porn are more likely to have multiple partners and extramarital sex.
“Is it just that people who like casual sex gravitate to pornography? I didn’t find that to be the case in a follow-up study,” says Wright. “Viewing pornography was associated with increases in casual sex, but the reverse wasn't true—casual sex didn't predict pornography use.” 
Wright’s findings are in line with what psychologists call “sexual script theory,” the widely studied notion that what we watch becomes our definition and even our expectation of normal sex.
Think of it as an internal rehearsal: “People look at other people as behavioral models, gaining an idea of how a specific sexual encounter is supposed to go—‘that is what I need to do to experience that kind of pleasure,’” says Elizabeth Morgan, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at Boise State University. “We don’t typically watch other people in the bedroom, so it’s often through sexually explicit media that these scripts are presented to us.”
The natural reaction, says Bridges, is to assume immunity—that the depictions in porn may influence other people’s desires but not your own. “People consistently say, ‘It’s not going to affect me,’ about a number of things, including political persuasion and advertising,” says Bridges. “But we’re being impacted all the time by what we consume with our eyes and ears and brains. There’s no question.”
Or as Struthers puts it, “Denial is the first line of defense. Because so many men have viewed so much porn, the fear about how it has affected them is too overwhelming. So they deny the issue.” But it doesn’t go away.
And in fact, researchers may have a tendency to focus too much on the harm done. Bryant Paul, Ph.D., a telecommunications professor at Indiana University who studies sexual messages in the media, says “there is definitely a bias in media-effects research toward studying the potential negative effects of things rather than the positive ones. Porn is almost always portrayed in a negative light.”
Whatever the negative bias in the research may be, porn is inarguably designed with its primary audience in mind—it consists of visual cues that will most effectively capture men’s attention.
“The camera angles minimize the visual information about who the guy is. Porn tends to be shots of the penis, with the woman seen in more totality,” says Bridges. It’s intended to make men feel as if they're actually having sex, not just watching it.
A 2007 Emory University study shows that men tend to imagine acting on the female star, removing the male actor from the equation.
Women, by contrast, imagine that they're the female actor. “The man is probably thinking, ‘She’s hot. I want to screw her.’ But the woman is probably thinking, ‘I feel sexy,’” says Rupp, who conducted the study. 
Similarly, in a 2011 Princeton University study, men were asked to pair verbs with images of nearly naked women. They tended to choose first-person statements, like “I grab” or “I control.”
“When looking at the bikini-clad women, these men were thinking, ‘I am acting on this person,’ rather than, ‘She is acting,’” says study author Susan Fiske, Ph.D., director of Princeton University’s intergroup relations and social neurosciences lab. Because men tend to focus on performing sex acts rather than being the recipient of them, they may be more likely to replicate in real life what they see in porn.
That’s not to say that every man who looks at porn fantasizes about slapping women or ejaculating on them, which are two common behaviors seen in top-selling adult videos, according to a recent University of Arkansas study.
Personal preference plays a role: If you’re repulsed by, say, double penetration, then pornographic images that depict it won’t magically rewire your brain and compel you to reenact it. It’s when you’re neutral toward or mildly interested in a particular sex act that porn has more potential to shape your desires, says Wright.
Sexual experience also factors in. “If you’re seeing this but have a long history of relationships and have other role models for sexuality, it’s probably not going to have the same impact as if this were your first glimpse into the world of sex,” says Bridges.
That glimpse is becoming more revealing than ever: In a 1985 study, 92 percent of men had looked at Playboy by age 15; in a 2008 study, 74 percent had seen Internet porn—usually featuring genitalia, intercourse, and often group sex—by age 15.
The younger a guy is when he starts surfing porn sites, Bridges notes, the greater the potential influence on his sexual expectations.
Case in point: In a recent study of college students in the Journal of Sex Research , men who watched porn once a week expressed a greater desire for partners who talked dirty, dominated them, used sex toys, had shaved pubic areas, and participated in threesomes than men who watched it less frequently.
“Basically, they were interested in partners who engaged in the same behaviors they saw women in pornography engage in,” says Morgan, who conducted the study.
This isn’t inherently bad. Nearly a quarter of men and women say pornography has helped them experiment more in bed, and just over 20 percent say porn has made them more comfortable voicing their desires, according to recent research in the Archives of Sexual Behavior .
“If you’re looking at pornography for sexual learning—to give your significant other a more pleasurable oral sex experience, for example—you may be less likely to become compulsive than someone who views it because he is depressed and lonely,” says Wright.
In fact, in a study published in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors , men who used Internet porn for sexual education experienced an increase in real-life sexual activity with a partner. But those who sought it to cope with stress reported an increase in relationship problems.
The drive behind ordinary usage of pornography is mostly just normal sexual motivation. But someone who is struggling with addiction not only has that normal sex drive but also has another powerful motivation.
He may be trying to recover from something, such as events in his life that have left him feeling degraded, and when he uses pornography he creates a fantasy in which he overcomes that degradation.
“So this person has two really strong motivations going—a pretty potent sexual cocktail—and a whole lot more reason to use the porn,” says Ray Bergner, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Illinois State University. “So the potential for becoming hooked is greater.”
A recent University of Arkansas study found that a third of men use porn to ease boredom or stress; a fifth turn to it when they’re lonely. The same study also linked sexual media use to depression in men but not women.
“Women with even mild levels of depression start to lose interest in sex quickly,” explains Bridges. “But for men, depression has to reach severe levels before their sexual drive goes down.”
When men have secondary motives, porn becomes more than just a source of positive reinforcement (sexual pleasure, that is). For these men, often called “at-risk users,” it’s also a way to escape unpleasant feelings, such as loneliness or stress . “They’re using porn to cope,” says Bridges. “That tends to be associated with more problematic use.”
Problematic isn’t necessarily compulsive—it simply implies that using porn has led to some undesired outcome.
In a Utah State University study, for example, more than half of male users said looking at porn led to problematic outcomes—social, spiritual, psychological, or relational. These negative effects weren’t linked to viewing time—the men who watched porn frequently were just as likely to report problems as those who watched it less often.
The distinction between casual and problematic use may have less to do with frequency and more with masturbation .
“The big kicker that people leave out of the equation is the ejaculatory response,” says Struthers. “This is what really stores the memory. When you have an orgasm, there’s a release of oxytocin, the bonding hormone, presumably to bind you to your partner. If you’re viewing pornography, your partner is the screen in front of you.”
As Manning explains, “When all those hormones are released, you’re conditioning the brain to bond and attach to those images.” This pleasurable surge, combined with “perceived enhancement” of real-world sex, can overshadow—even mask—any negative effects of porn, driving men to keep viewing it, she says.
This raises important questions: How does porn impact sex with the woman you share (or hope to share) a bed with? And when does “perceived” relationship enhancement become actual?
For some couples, it could be never: The intimacy-boosting effect of porn may be confined to couples who are already synchronized in their sexual tastes, say researchers at the University of California.
In other words, if both partners aren’t equally open to porn, the enhancing effect can become negative—less a hot threesome, more an unwelcome third party.
One Norwegian study, for example, found that when only one partner used porn, couples often reported sexual dysfunction, including low arousal. Partners who both used porn reported fewer sexual problems.
If she’s into it, it’s a party. If not, it’s a potential problem. (Maybe a threesome isn’t her style. Try these five other strategies to Make Her Fantasies Come True. )
We were supposed to be having vacation sex. You know, the kind of uninhibited hotel-room romp that can turn even the tamest women into wild animals.
But we couldn’t even make it past foreplay . As we lay in the bed, sandy and sunburned, my then boyfriend described the precise and unusual—to me, anyway—ways he wanted to be touched. This was not an erotic conversation; his manner was calculated, his directions nonnegotiable.
My mind was racing. Had I done something wrong? Had every other guy led me astray?
Then I remembered a guy my friend dated in college. He had been insistent about ejaculating on her chest.
“That’s what they do in porn, so that's what he wants,” she’d bluntly explained. Was my boyfriend accustomed to sex in one specific way—the way he touched himself when he masturbated?
Or, worse, the way he saw it in porn?
So I just blurted it out: “Do you look at pornography?”
He paused, apparently taken aback, and then turned to face me. “Yeah, I mean, sometimes.”
My expression must have alarmed him because he quickly added, “Only, like, 40 percent of the times I masturbate, though.”
I hoped he couldn’t tell I was crying.
My reaction embarrassed me at the time, but I’ve since learned it wasn’t atypical among my fema
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