Thank you for the opportunity of sharing some of our research findings.
I've been involved in this research program for about 40 years now. It primarily focuses on the characteristics of men in the general population who are more likely to commit acts of sexual aggression against women. In the process, we've developed a model that we call a “confluence model”, which examines the various risks and protective factors that make an individual more likely to be at risk for committing such acts of sexual aggression.
As parts of this confluence model, where we look at the interaction of multiple factors, we have identified what we call, relatively, “primary” factors, and then also there are secondary factors. Within that general framework, we've studied how pornography exposure may increase the risk for committing acts of sexual aggression.
In that overall framework, pornography exposure is considered a secondary factor. There are other factors that we consider more formative and primary. The role of pornography exposure, particularly when you focus on non-consenting pornography—where we looked at other kinds as well and, more recently, child pornography—by and large we see as priming or activating certain risk characteristics the person already may have based on the primary factors.
The overall conclusion suggests that if a person is at relatively high risk, based on the primary factors that we've been studying, then exposure to certain kinds of pornography, particularly non-consenting pornography, as well as, for certain individuals, child pornography, and some other types of pornography as well, may add fuel to the fire, so to speak. If a person already has that kind of risk, then heavy pornography exposure in particular may make them considerably more likely to have attitudes accepting of violence against women and also to act out under some circumstances in sexually aggressive ways.
As for the methodologies we've used, in recognizing the limitations of not being able to do the ideal scientific kind of study, you have to use multiple methods. The ideal study obviously would be unethical, such as, let us say, to randomly assign a group of boys at a young age to heavy pornography exposure or no pornography exposure and then track their behaviour over many years. Because that is unethical and impossible, we have used many different kinds of methodologies, including survey studies, laboratory studies where we can do random assignment, including field experiments, where we can do some degree of random assignment, including longitudinal studies.
Overall, the data have converged I think to a large degree from these multiple methods that complement each other to show that, indeed, if a person already is at relatively higher risk, then exposure to certain kinds of pornography—particularly, again, heavy exposure—increases the risk and makes them more likely both to hold attitudes accepting of violence against women and, in some cases, to actually act out in a sexually aggressive manner.
With those introductory remarks, I'll be glad to amplify my comments and to take any questions. Let me add that currently the technician that is supposed to run the equipment hasn't arrived and won't arrive for another 12 minutes or so.