But the narrative at the core of this genre is a crock, according to a new study published in the journal Sexual Medicine. Researchers from UCLA and Montreal’s Concordia University collected data from 280 (mostly young) men on the average number of hours per week they spent watching pornography (answers ranged from zero to 25); their sex drives more generally; whether they were in a monogamous relationship (123 were); and their erectile functioning. Participants also watched a very “vanilla” porn film in the lab and reported their arousal level.
The researchers found no relationship between pornography habits and experiencing erectile dysfunction among sexually active participants. “Many clinicians claim that watching erotica makes men unable to respond sexually to ‘normal’ sexual situations with a partner,” said study co-author Nicole Prause, an associate research scientist at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. “That was not the case in our sample.”
“These data suggest that inventing a new problem—porn causing erectile problems—for which there is no tested treatment, may be a disservice to patients,” she continued.
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