What Counts as Porn? It Depends Who You Ask

Source: charlesdeluvio / Unsplash

The effects of pornography are a hotly debated topic among psychologists and the general public alike. Complicating matters is that research on porn's effects are all over the map. Some studies point to largely negative impacts, others to mostly positive impacts, and yet others to mixed effects. However, one of the reasons we see so many conflicting results is that different researchers use different definitions of "porn," and many don't even bother to define it at all.

It's surprisingly common in studies where people are asked about their porn usage habits for researchers to leave it up to the participants to determine what does and doesn't count as porn. But when we don't gather detail on what they're counting as porn, we run the risk of people applying very inconsistent definitions of porn both within and between studies.

For example, some people may be reporting on their experiences viewing hardcore videos. Some might be thinking about some erotic fiction they read or a steamy Hollywood film (e.g., Fifty Shades of Grey). And some might be thinking about flipping through a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue or Victoria's Secret catalog.

Obviously, these are all very different things—and, as researchers, it’s important for us to know what people are counting and what they aren’t when we’re trying to understand the effects of porn.

How Much Agreement Is There on What Counts as Porn?

So how do people typically define porn anyway? And how much do they agree on what does and doesn't count? A study published in the Journal of Sex Research offers some insight.

In this research, approximately 2,100 participants (age 31 on average; 64 percent of whom identified as male) completed an online survey in which they were given a list of 20 different categories that ranged from explicit sexual media to sexually suggestive content. For each category, participants rated whether it was “definitely not porn” or “definitely porn” on a scale ranging from 0 to 10 (the higher the number, the more people think that the content represents porn).

For 11 of the categories, participants were largely in agreement that they constituted porn, with average ratings between 6 and 8. Almost all of these categories featured nude men, women, or both who were either engaged in sexual activity or were posing in a suggestive way.

Also included in this “likely-to-be-porn” category were detailed written descriptions of couples engaged in sex. In other words, it’s not just pictures and videos that count.

There's a Big Grey Area in Porn Definitions

So, for about half of the categories (those comprising more explicit depictions of sexual activity), most people were on the same page. But ratings for the other half reveal a substantial grey area.

Four of the categories were rated between 5 and 6 on average, indicating things that people thought bordered on porn, but weren't entirely sure about. These included novels and Hollywood films that included a single explicit sexual scene, as well as images of women with exposed breasts (but not genitals) posing suggestively.

The last five categories were rated as less than 5, meaning that most people didn’t think they were porn. These included images of people in their underwear, swimsuit issues, and television shows with blurred nudity.

However, it's important to highlight that there wasn’t 100 percent agreement on anything. Looking only at average ratings conceals a high level of individual variability. Looking at the full range of responses, we see that some people weren’t convinced that videos of a couple having sex were porn, while others were convinced that a swimsuit issue was.

It's also worth noting that what people counted as porn also depended on their demographic background. For example, women tended to rate things as more pornographic than men, especially the more explicit depictions of sex. People who were married and/or were more religious gave higher ratings across the board, especially to things at the less explicit end of the spectrum (like swimsuit issues).

Pornography Essential Reads

What Women Hate About Porn

Is Watching Porn Alone a Betrayal?

Takeaways

What all of this tells us is that porn very much appears to be in the eye of the beholder. Different people count very different things as “pornographic.”

This is important because it means that findings across different porn studies might not be directly comparable. For example, in light of the fact that different demographic groups count different things as porn, samples that skew more female or more religious or have a higher proportion of married participants might be based on more sweeping definitions.

If we really want to understand porn's effects, we would do well in future research to either define “porn” for participants in these studies, or at least ask them how they define it. Such an approach might help us to make sense of inconsistent findings about the effects of porn while also allowing us to understand the effects of specific types of porn.