Page 325 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

314 HARRIS AND SCOTT

has become the “normal” anchor (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974) to which
real people are compared.
Such effects are not limited to men. Relative to control groups, both men
and women who watched weekly pornographic films later reported less
satisfaction with the affection, physical appearance, sexual curiosity, and
sexual performance of their real-life partners (Zillmann & Bryant, 1988a,
1988b). They also saw sex without emotional involvement as being rela-
tively more important than did the control group, and they showed greater
acceptance of premarital and extramarital sex and placed lesser value on
marriage and monogamy. They also reported less desire to have children
and greater acceptance of male dominance and female submission.
Using the same methodology of showing weekly films and questioning
1 to 3 weeks later, Zillmann and Bryant (1982, 1984) found that partici-
pants watching sexually explicit films overestimated the frequency of sex-
ual practices like fellatio, cunnilingus, anal intercourse, sadomasochism,
and bestiality in the general population, relative to perceptions of a con-
trol group seeing nonsexual films. This may reflect the cognitive heuristic
of availability, whereby we judge the frequency of occurrence of various
activities by the ease with which we can generate examples (Taylor, 1982;
Tversky & Kahneman, 1973, 1974). Recent exposure to vivid media
instances thus leads to an overestimation of such occurrences in the real
world and a perceived reality substantially at odds with reality.
The sexual material need not even be explicit or graphic to help shape
attitudes. Bryant and Rockwell (1994) found that, compared to controls,
adolescents who watched a heavy diet of highly sexual prime-time pro-
grams were more lenient in their judgment about sexual impropriety and
how much a victim had been wronged, although these effects were
greatly attenuated by open family communication and active critical
viewing.
One may not even need pictures. In one study all-verbal print descrip-
tions of sex (e.g., the Penthouse Advisor column) were actually more con-
ducive than photos to fantasizing about one’s own partner (Dermer &
Pyszczynski, 1978). Many issues require further study, and the effects of
newer types of sexual media such as phone sex and Internet pornography
are still largely unknown.

Behavioral Effects

Teaching New Behaviors. Beyond arousal and attitude change, con-
suming sexual media also has effects on behavior. On the one hand, the
media may actually teach new behaviors, including potentially some
extremely violent and destructive ones. Although examples like men
watching a movie depicting a gang rape on a pool table and soon afterward