Premature Speculation Concerning Pornography’s Effects on Relationships

The possible effects of pornography use on romantic relationships, as well as other outcomes more broadly, are a deeply divisive issue. Partially reflecting public concern regarding the dangers of pornography (Montgomery-Graham, Kohut, Fisher, & Campbell, 2015), much of the accumulated research appears to indicate that pornography use may undermine relationship quality (Wright, Tokunaga, Kraus, & Klann, 2017). There is, however, a minority position that has been critical of the view that pornography harms relationships, which has criticized the existing literature on both methodological and conceptual grounds (Campbell & Kohut, 2017), and pointed to select studies that indicate potential relational benefits of pornography use (see Kohut, Fisher, & Campbell, 2017). It is within this empirical milieu that Leonhardt, Spencer, Butler, and Theobold (2018) proposed a theoretical framework for understanding the effects of sexual media on different aspects of relationship quality. Their Target Article appears to be a genuine attempt to reconcile diverse findings in this domain, and we applaud them for providing more than token treatment of the possible non-negative effects of pornography use while still accounting for the presumed harms. In a field that has been criticized for being too atheoretical (Newstrom & Harris, 2016), we see this as a positive step forward. We do feel there are several issues, however, that limit the utility of this newly proposed framework. It is our opinion that this theoretical proposal may be premature because non-trivial problems pertaining to the measurement of pornography use will likely hamper future applications and attempts at falsification. Further, there are some elements of this specific framework that are unclear to us or with which we disagree and we encourage Leonhardt et al. (2018) to consider additional explication, elaboration, and refinement of this model. Finally, it occurs to us that this framework further compounds the assumed causal role of pornography use on downstream outcomes, largely ignoring alternative explanations and well-established theories that may plausibly apply