Recent findings indicate that deficits in emotional regulation, stress and anxiety may influence lower sexual satisfaction, sexual dysfunctions and increased consumption of pornography. The objective of this research was to assess if traumatic stress and dissociative experiences from previous life manifested by typical symptoms will be related to increased levels of pornography consumption. In this observational study 1100 adult young men (mean age 27.55, age range 20–35, standard deviation = 5.21) were assessed for their pornography consumption behavior (sexual addiction screening test-revised, youth pornography addiction screening tool) and for their stress symptoms (trauma symptoms checklist-40), symptoms reflecting dissociative experiences (dissociative experiences scale), and symptoms of anxiety (self-rating anxiety scale). The results indicate that in these participants their pornography consumption experiences manifest significant positive Spearman correlations with stress symptoms (Spearman r = 0.47, P < .01), and mild correlations were also found for pornography consumption in its relationship to dissociative experiences and anxiety, and the results were also confirmed using Mann–Whitney test. The data indicate that the pornography consumption may be closely related to stress response, anxiety and defense mechanism related to dissociative experiences.
Privara et al. (Fri,) studied this question.