Pornography from the Perspective of Evolutionary Psychology

Pornography from the Perspective of Evolutionary Psychology

This post was written in the wake of heated discussions on Habr around a series of news items related to pornography in one way or another. These and similar threads raise the topic of internet censorship and banning pornography entirely or specific genres of it. While the Habr community is generally quite liberal about porn, discussions about its effects on the psyche — especially children's — usually escalate into serious drama.

Meanwhile, there is virtually no trustworthy data about the effects of pornography on public and personal health in these discussions; moreover, my attempts to quickly find any sensible data online were unsuccessful. In search of answers, I had to dive fairly deep into scientific research, and I did find a few things. A brief synopsis of modern scientific views on pornography and its effects on humans will be given below, after a short FAQ.

Q: Will there be pictures?
A: Yes.

Q: What does this post have to do with Habr?
A: It's interesting to Habr's readers.

Q: No, really — what does this post have to do with Habr's subject matter?
A: Nothing; I simply believe that Habr is, first and foremost, a specific audience, not a subject area.

Q: Why is this in the "Internet" blog?
A: Because the Internet is for porn.

Introductory Remarks

To begin, I'd like to outline the views of evolutionary psychologists on human behavior and provide some examples and analogies.

From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, genetically determined human behavior manifests as follows:
(a) there must be some context in which the genetic "program" is triggered;
(b) the "programmed" behavior in that context once increased our ancestors' chances of survival and passing their genes to offspring.

Both parts are critically important: the trigger for any given action is always some context; the resulting behavior had to provide advantages specifically in the conditions in which Homo sapiens lived for tens and hundreds of thousands of years.

It should be noted here that "context" is a conditional concept; the trigger is always a very limited set of simple conditions, and the reaction is also simple. As an illustration, I've chosen a wonderful example from the life of birds:

A mother turkey in her nest behaves extremely aggressively and attacks everything that moves — except her own chicks. The question arises: how does she distinguish chicks from strangers? The answer is: by their chirping. The chicks chirp, and therefore the mother doesn't attack them. If the turkey is deaf, she will kill her own chicks immediately after they hatch (see Konrad Lorenz, "On Aggression," Chapter 7).

This is roughly how all genetically determined reactions work — the genetic "source code" is formed through random mutations, so it can only contain the simplest conditions and simplest reactions to them. It cannot cover all possible situations and edge cases — it simply provides an organism's response that ensures better survival under certain conditions.

Moreover, due to its simplicity, such predetermined reactions often trigger where they are inappropriate and produce negative results — as long as the overall sum of benefit and loss (accounting for the frequency of situations) remains positive.

Furthermore, the response most often comes down to the release of certain hormones, meaning it frequently doesn't predetermine an individual's behavior but only provokes certain behavior in the most general terms. Depending on the nature of the context, the person's emotional state, their personal experience, and many other factors, the same reaction can lead to different resulting actions — behavior is variable. We can only talk about the probabilities that a person will act one way or another.

Reproductive Strategies of Men and Women

Let's move from abstract reasoning to the concrete — specifically, let's try to understand what drives the difference in sexual behavior between men and women. Most of the reasoning below is drawn from the book "Sexually Explicit Media, Gender Differences, and Evolutionary Theory" by Neil Malamuth.

Although the evolutionary goals of a person of any sex are the same — survive and leave offspring — the opportunities for "leaving offspring" differ between men and women.

The number of potential offspring a man can leave is essentially unlimited. His cost for creating a new life is very small. Our ancestors' living conditions did not include child support payments.

But the number of children a woman can bear is directly limited. A 9-month pregnancy, followed by nursing and child-rearing — factoring in infant mortality — left women with only a handful of chances to pass on their genes. Obviously, under such conditions, women had to be extremely selective about sexual partners (there was no contraception either); a woman who wasn't exceptionally choosy about sexual partners most likely would not pass on her genes to offspring.

This presents both sexes with the problem of choosing an optimal reproductive strategy — or rather, an optimal balance of reproductive strategies.

Let's start with men. If circumstances are favorable, a man leaves offspring without paying anything for it; naturally, men who actively pursue casual sex will, all else being equal, leave more offspring than their less sexually active peers. The prize — free transmission of genes to the next generation — is so enormous in this case (essentially the maximum possible) that the selection pressure on men here is unprecedented. A man must be ready for sex always and everywhere and constantly seek casual encounters — otherwise, he will most likely be uncompetitive.

However, this isn't the only possible strategy; casual sex costs nothing and guarantees nothing. Under certain conditions, it may be more advantageous to directly invest resources in the guaranteed raising of offspring (and consequently, in one's partner or partners during pregnancy). Here, however, there's a problem — you can't reliably determine if the child is yours; men have to exhibit possessive instincts and shield their partners from the attention of other men — all else being equal, a more jealous husband will leave more offspring.

The first strategy is short-term, the second is long-term; it's impossible to predict which will prove more beneficial. Therefore, in most situations, the optimal approach for a man is a combination of these two strategies: on one hand, having one or several regular partners and investing in them and in his offspring as many resources as possible; on the other hand, actively seeking and exploiting opportunities for casual sex, preferably with healthy and young women (since healthy and young women have much better chances of successfully raising offspring without the father's support).

Re-read the previous paragraph carefully. Quite an accurate picture, isn't it?

Now let's turn to women's strategy. Given the extreme difficulty of raising offspring alone, having a man (or men) nearby who are willing to invest resources in them and their offspring is critically important for women. In the absence of child support — and even money in general — the only bond linking a man and a woman is emotional attachment (a lyrical digression: emotional attachment is characteristic not only of humans but also of many other animals — see Lorenz for details), and in this context, it's important for a woman to convince herself by any available means that the man's feelings are mutual (including by testing the strength of his feelings and requiring a lengthy courtship period). This is precisely why establishing an emotional connection before a physical one is so critically important for women in relationships.

Malamuth notes here that there are situations where promiscuity is the optimal strategy for women as well, just as for men; such situations are rare, but a certain — though significantly less than male — drive toward casual sex is also part of the female strategy. For example, the responsibility for a population's genetic diversity falls primarily on women, which in small closed communities where everyone is related to each other pushes them to seek sex with "random passers-by" and even low-status men.

Let's venture to supplement Malamuth here and point out two more variations of female reproductive strategy that can be rational in certain situations. First, although the presence of a loving and generous man is critically important, given the impossibility of determining paternity, there is a certain logic in deceiving a man, making him raise other men's children. Indeed, such an "ideal" prince charming implements a far from ideal reproductive strategy (neglecting other women) — making him a good candidate for husband but not for father; the ideal candidates as fathers would be precisely the "machos" implementing more successful strategies. This fact, on one hand, stimulates women's tendency toward adultery and, on the other, intensifies control (jealousy) from men. Note that a man's jealousy and suspicion have no correlation whatsoever with his own marital fidelity — it is evolutionarily advantageous to simultaneously be jealous and cheat on your wife left and right!

There is also one more female strategy, which, however, cannot be combined with the standard one — to disregard, to a certain extent, the qualities of sexual partners and any romantic feelings, focusing instead on obtaining resources and investing them in one's own offspring. This behavioral model is effectively prostitution.

So, using only the tools of evolutionary psychology, we have constructed behavioral strategies for men and women that should have been optimal a couple of tens of thousands of years ago. As we can see, programs laid down long ago continue to act on us in the most direct way, even though the context and meaning of their existence have long since changed beyond recognition.

Indeed, in the modern world, strategies formed tens of thousands of years ago are simply ineffective, or even directly harmful. However, genes don't know this :) and continue to trigger the release of the "right" hormones at the "right" moments.

It should be noted that reproductive strategies are not the only factor influencing human sexual behavior. In the hierarchical systems of primates and humans, sex also plays a role as a tool for determining social status. In bonobo chimpanzees, sex is practically the main element of social relations.

However, in humans, public sex is taboo almost everywhere (for many reasons, including those mentioned above — both men and women find it strategically advantageous to hide their affairs; moreover, due to a number of circumstances I won't detail here, sex is associated with submission), and therefore "social" sex in humans is usually symbolic and thus does not have a serious impact on the processes we are investigating.

Pornography

Now we are ready to answer the question of why humans are attracted to pornography.

Why does the sight of a woman ready for sex arouse men? Simply because those men who were NOT aroused by the sight of a woman ready for sex died out long ago without leaving offspring.

Why do images of a woman ready for sex arouse men? Because instincts cannot distinguish images from reality. Why do sexual fantasies arouse men? For the same reason — instinct cannot distinguish fantasy from reality. The instinct simply releases the right substances into the bloodstream when certain simple conditions are met.

So, in broad terms, it's clear why viewing pornography causes strong arousal in men — because (a) it is a realistic depiction that concentrates all the "triggers" of sexual instincts, and (b) it provokes sexual fantasy. The effect of pornography on women is roughly the same, adjusted for the lesser strength of sexual instincts in women. For women, unlike men, a broader context of sexual activity is significantly important, which is why pornography in its pure form can also evoke negative emotions. Female behavior in this regard is more variable and depends much more strongly on emotional state than male behavior.

Let's now try to explain why men deliberately seek out pornography and are willing to spend valuable resources to obtain it, even though this seems completely pointless from an evolutionary standpoint. As became clear from the previous section, there is extraordinarily strong selection pressure forcing men (and, to a lesser extent, women) to always and everywhere seek opportunities for sex. This drive is so powerful that under real conditions it simply cannot be satisfied. Men exist in a state of permanent stress due to the gap between the level of desire and the level of opportunity.

Consequently, a man is forced to either suppress his emotions or seek substitutes for real sexual relationships — and usually finds them in the form of erotic fantasies and masturbation. Remember, a given gene can predetermine behavior that is frankly harmful in certain situations, but this doesn't prevent it from becoming established in the gene pool if the overall sum of benefit and loss is greater than zero. In this case, we are dealing with precisely such genes: it is evolutionarily more advantageous to maintain a high level of sexual desire and accept the inevitable stresses and unproductive ways of fulfilling it than to have a consistently low level of sexual instincts or to adjust them to the real situation.

In this context, pornography represents an extremely convenient mechanism, since combined with fantasy it allows one to successfully "fool" one's own instincts; the illusion of a successful sexual strategy is created — the appearance of sex with many young and sexually attractive women.

One more point should be noted here: since genetically predetermined reactions are very simple, they "know" nothing about deviations in their triggering mechanism. If for whatever reason a person is interested in sexual objects and practices that preclude sexual reproduction, this in no way affects the operation of all other instincts; genes will continue to provoke the individual to follow the optimal strategy, even if it will obviously not yield results.

The Impact of Pornography on Individuals and Society

Finally, we can turn to the question posed at the beginning of the article — can we justifiably speak of any harm (or any benefit) of pornography to individuals and to society as a whole?

The vast majority of online materials on this topic address only one theme — the impact of pornography on rape statistics. Unfortunately, most studies are limited to this very question. I won't recount the entire history of this issue here — anyone interested can start digging from Wikipedia. I'll mention briefly that there is no reliable statistical data on this question — some researchers conclude that the number of violent sexual crimes decreases as a result of the spread of pornography, while others report an increase in the number of rapes. The topic is so debatable that proponents of different viewpoints draw diametrically opposite conclusions from the same facts.

The most adequate and comprehensive study of pornography's impact on society I found was in the works of Susan Dwyer, particularly in the article "Constructing the 'Problem' of Pornography."

Dwyer identifies three key approaches to the problem of pornography's impact:
a) Traditional — pornography is immoral, therefore it should be banned;
b) The criminological approach mentioned above — pornography leads to a decrease/increase in the number of violent crimes, and therefore should be permitted/banned;
c) Feminist — pornography promotes behavioral models that are unacceptable in a free society.

Regarding option (a), it is vulnerable from several angles: first, one can argue that moral norms change and assert that pornography in modern society is no longer viewed as something unambiguously immoral, and that norms need to be revised; second, one can simply reject the very principle that any immoral phenomenon should be prosecuted by law — in modern legal society, there is a clear rejection of the concept of "victimless crimes."

Option (b) is most frequently used in debates about pornography and, as mentioned above, is currently not conclusively supported by any reliable data. In essence, this discussion should simply be shelved until scientific results emerge that do not allow for ambiguous interpretations.

From the standpoint of evolutionary psychology, there isn't even a unified understanding of what sexual violence actually is. Some researchers believe that violence is also one of the possible male sexual strategies, triggered in the absence of other options for reproduction — sexual violence is typically committed by people who are (a) single and (b) of low social status — that is, evolutionary losers. In this light, pornography as an alternative way to reduce the pressure of sexual instincts should lead to a decrease in violence levels. However, other researchers present well-argued objections to the concept of "violence as a reproductive strategy."

As Dwyer rightly notes, even acknowledging pornography's potential danger cannot, from a liberal standpoint, serve as grounds for banning it, since pornography falls under freedom of expression legislation; after all, a pornographic film is as much a creative work as any other film. Freedom of speech is a fundamental value in its own right, which is why a complete ban on pornography is, generally speaking, unconstitutional in most countries of the world.

Finally, option (c), surprisingly, represents the most coherent and interesting concept within the framework of our study. These arguments were originally put forward by feminists (notably Andrea Dworkin) and can be briefly summarized as follows:

(a) Pornography depicts sexual relations in a form that generally assigns women a subordinate role (we will not address specific genres where this claim is untrue, if only because of their extremely small weight within the porn industry);

(b) By doing so, pornography reinforces behavioral models in consciousness that are undesirable in modern society;

(c) This is especially true in the context of pornography's accessibility to children, who are still in the process of socialization;

(d) In particular, animated pornography in this context is no different from pornography with live actors and should also be banned.

Overall, one cannot deny this argument a certain logical and factual coherence. Indeed, the model of treating women in pornographic films is sometimes simply unacceptable in real life; moreover, due to pornography's exceptional emotional impact on humans, it is indeed quite capable of reinforcing such behavioral models in consciousness. Whether to accept or reject this concept is your personal choice.

The following arguments can be made against this concept:

(a) As Dwyer rightly points out, undesirable behavioral models are not inherently linked to the pornographic depiction of sexual relations itself. So-called "female-friendly" pornography exists that lacks these shortcomings. Thus, based on Dworkin's reasoning, one can demand the banning of specific pornographic films, but not pornography as such.

(b) Pornographers depict this model of gender relations precisely because it is perceived by men as the "default"; changing the format of porn will not change the genetic behavioral model.

(c) Suppose that in modern society we should ban promoting the "default" male behavioral strategy as not meeting the demands of the times. What then can be said about the "default" female strategy described in previous sections? Does it meet the demands of the times? From the feminist perspective — no more than the male one! Do so-called romance novels promote the idea of complete gender equality? Absolutely not — they exploit the genetically ingrained female desire to have a strong and loving man nearby, onto whom one can offload the responsibility for providing resources for the family. Should we then ban romance novels (feminists do actually demand this!)? If you're so worried that your child will watch porn, why aren't you worried that your child will hear fairy tales about Cinderella, which — just like porn! — exploit genetically ingrained reproductive strategies?

In other words, if we break pornography down into its three components and analyze them separately, we can arrive at the following:

(a) The sexual component itself, the depiction of the sex act — cannot in itself be either beneficial or harmful; people consciously seek out pornography because it provides an opportunity to reduce the pressure of sexual instincts, and this pressure exists precisely to make a person seek ways to reduce it; if a person (child) doesn't have this pressure, then pornographic content means nothing to them.

(b) The behavioral component — the depiction of a behavioral model that from the male perspective is ideal but is unacceptable under conditions of gender equality; the behavioral component of pornographic content in and of itself brings the same benefit/harm as the behavioral component of, say, romance novels. It cannot create a behavioral strategy from nothing — it simply actualizes the genetic program.

(c) The social component — the depiction of a behavioral model clearly and unmistakably linked to relations of domination and status competition. Here, in principle, one could talk about some negative impact on the psyche in general (and children's psyche in particular), were it not for one "but": humans participate in status competition FROM BIRTH. Status competition among children even in kindergarten is already extremely intense. What negative influence can pornography have here? Probably none — porn is still far from action movies, talk shows(!), and other vivid depictions of status competition.

Conclusion

This article doesn't claim to be an exhaustive treatment of the problems of pornography in modern society. I've simply presented the facts and concepts I was able to find, and the conclusions I reached. You are free to disagree with them.

I'll note in advance that I may use certain terms (behavior, instinct, etc.) not entirely (or not at all) correctly from the standpoint of a professional ethologist, but at the very least, I try to avoid factual inaccuracies.