A new research study performed at the University of Oklahoma by scientist Samuel Perry has concluded that watching pornography on a regular basis may actually stimulate religious longings. Current group think seems to imply that the viewing of pornography will make someone less religious and more likely to abandon a religious leaning. Most mainstream religions tend to frown on pornography and consider it a strategy to prevent people from watching it.
However, in Perry’s study, published in the Journal of Sex Research, declares that viewing pornography more than once a week tends to make people more likely to be religious. The watching of pornography has increased immensely over the last couple of decades mostly due to the availability of in over the world wide web.
Perry tracked a sample group of 1,314 adults over the course of a six year period (2006-2012) and monitored their viewing of pornography. For the research, pornography was defined as any sexually explicit material that sexually aroused someone who was watching it. He also monitored the religious views and leanings of his subjects and looked for a connection between the two seemingly opposite ends of the spectrum. Perry would periodically question his subjects with regard to the views about both pornography and religion as the experiment progressed.
While controlling factors such as gender and the age of his subjects, Perry discovered that the viewing of the pornography by both the males and the females did, indeed, make them abandon or lessen their religious leanings. However, after Perry accelerated the viewing to watching more than once a week, his subjects tended to become more religious. Both the men and the women became more religious as the frequency of watching was increased.
The factors relating to this seem to be more complex than at first glance. The research suggests that, perhaps, people were rationalizing their behavior to account for their religious convictions. The less frequently watched, the more the inward disapproval and the turning toward their religious convictions. The more frequently the pornography is watched tended to strengthen their appreciation for their religious convictions.
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