Study finds link between viewing pornography and becoming more religious
Analyses showed that even after statistically controlling for background factors, such as age and gender, more frequent use of pornography in 2006 was related to lower religiousness in 2012. This was true even after accounting for religiousness in 2006, which indicates that pornography use in 2006 was related with subsequent changes in religious involvement over the course of the next six years.
The nature of this relationship was complex. Pornography consumption was related to decreased subsequent religiousness until the rate of consumption became more frequent than about once a week, at which point increasing pornography became related to subsequent increases in religiousness. These findings were the same for both men and women.
From: Study finds link between viewing pornography and becoming more religious
Riiiiiigh.Report
Studies show that subscribing to John Oliver’s YouTube channel makes one more suspicious of media reports of studies, but I will say the usual suspects don’t seem to be in play for this one.Report
The actual study is here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224499.2016.1146203
Some of the data looks plausible enough. For instance, figure 3 shows an unmistakable “dip and then rise,” which is unlikely to be computational artifact. (Compare this with the “religious doubts” graph in figure 1. That sudden jump on the edge of the graph is the sort of thing that happens when fitting data near the edges.) In any case, correlation ain’t causation — which I’d love to see a serious causal analysis, Pearl style. But all the same, it’s curious.
Religiosity is a thing. Bluntly, in the modern, scientific world, to continue firm religious belief is going to select a certain population. In other words, there are so many confounders in a situation like this, I don’t see how we can conclude anything except, “Things are weird.”Report
As an aside, I hate study questions like this:
The problem is, it asks about my religious faith, which is a thing that does not exist. So do I have “doubts”? I guess, but it’s more that I’m basically certain that there is no god. So how do I answer that, to give useful information to researchers? Should I say, “I have doubts ever day,” when in fact I feel no doubt at all about my beliefs?
(Perhaps they have a lead-in question that lets atheists/agnostics skip this part.)
Anyway, it forces me to guess what the researchers are trying to learn, which is at odds with my hyper-literal brain. It leaves me confused. When I encounter a survey question like this, I usually close the browser window. I’d rather provide no data than bad data. Blah.
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Short version: every question contains hidden assumptions. Make sure you think through what those assumptions are, and give those who don’t fit the frame some way to indicate this.Report
“Oh, God, yes!” is not necessarily a sign of religiosity.Report
But sticking with the missionary position often is.Report
@mike-schilling
I was going to call it a Come to Jesus momentReport