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Does Viewing Pornography Diminish Religiosity

Over Time? Evidence From Two-Wave Panel Data
Samuel L. Perry
To cite this article: Samuel L. Perry (2016): Does Viewing Pornography Diminish Religiosity
Over Time? Evidence From Two-Wave Panel Data, The Journal of Sex Research, DOI:
10.1080/00224499.2016.1146203
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2016.1146203

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Date: 16 May 2016, At: 10:04

THE JOURNAL OF SEX RESEARCH, 00(00), 113, 2016

Copyright The Society for the Scientic Study of Sexuality
ISSN: 0022-4499 print/1559-8519 online
DOI: 10.1080/00224499.2016.1146203

Does Viewing Pornography Diminish Religiosity Over Time?

Evidence From Two-Wave Panel Data
Samuel L. Perry

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Department of Sociology, University of Oklahoma

Research consistently shows a negative association between religiosity and viewing pornography. While scholars typically assume that greater religiosity leads to less frequent pornography
use, none have empirically examined whether the reverse could be true: that greater pornography use may lead to lower levels of religiosity over time. I tested for this possibility using two
waves of the nationally representative Portraits of American Life Study (PALS). Persons who
viewed pornography at all at Wave 1 reported more religious doubt, lower religious salience,
and lower prayer frequency at Wave 2 compared to those who never viewed porn. Considering
the effect of porn-viewing frequency, viewing porn more often at Wave 1 corresponded to
increases in religious doubt and declining religious salience at Wave 2. However, the effect of
earlier pornography use on later religious service attendance and prayer was curvilinear:
Religious service attendance and prayer decline to a point and then increase at higher levels
of pornography viewing. Testing for interactions revealed that all effects appear to hold
regardless of gender. Findings suggest that viewing pornography may lead to declines in
some dimensions of religiosity but at more extreme levels may actually stimulate, or at least
be conducive to, greater religiosity along other dimensions.
As pornography1 has become increasingly pervasive in the
United States (Carroll et al., 2008; Edelman, 2009), a growing body of literature has sought to understand its social
antecedents, correlates, and consequences. Within this
research, a common nding is that adolescents and adults
who more frequently consume pornography tend to be less
religious by a variety of different measures. Conversely,
persons who score higher in religiosity tend to report viewing
pornography less frequently (Baltazar, Helm, McBride,
Hopkins, & Stevens, 2010; Carroll et al., 2008; Doran &
Price, 2014; Doring, 2009; Grubbs, Exline, Pargament,

1
Scholars use a variety of terms to refer to pornography, including
sexually explicit media/materials or erotica (Carroll et al., 2008;
Lindgren, 1993; Manning, 2006; Short, Black, Smith, Wetterneck, &
Wells, 2012). Because a number of widely used national data sets use the
term pornography (e.g., General Social Surveys, National Study of Youth
and Religion, Portraits of American Life Study), I also use the term here.
Throughout the study, pornography or porn will refer to any sexually
explicit media (videos, Web sites, magazines, etc.) intended to arouse the
viewer.
Data and coding specications for replication are available from the
author upon request. The author wishes to thank the editor and anonymous
reviewers for their helpful feedback. All errors are my own.
Correspondence should be addressed to Samuel L. Perry, Department of
Sociology, University of Oklahoma, 780 Van Vleet Oval, Kaufman Hall,
Norman, OK 73019. E-mail: samperry@ou.edu
Color versions of one or more of the gures in the article can be found
online at www.tandfonline.com/HJSR.

Hook, & Carlisle, 2015; Maddox, Rhoades, & Markman,

2011; Nelson, Padilla-Walker, & Carroll, 2010; Patterson
& Price, 2012; Perry, 2015b, 2016; Poulsen, Busby, &
Galovan, 2013; Regnerus, 2007; Short, Kasper, &
Wetterneck, 2015; Stack, Wasserman, & Kern, 2004;
Wright, 2013; Wright, Bae, & Funk, 2013). The tacit
assumption within this research tends to be that religion
acts as the independent variable, with religiosity making
persons less inclined to view pornography because of
personal convictions and/or social constraint from their
moral community (Grubbs et al., 2015; Stack et al.,
2004). While this is certainly true to an extent, some
researchers propose that religiosity itself may be inuenced by more frequent pornography use (Baltazar et al.,
2010; Nelson et al., 2010; Perry, 2015a; Short et al., 2015).
These scholars theorize that greater pornography use, for
religious persons, can have a dampening effect on religious
vitality owing to an increased sense of shame, cognitive
dissonance, or even more serious social disorders. This
theory, however, has yet to be tested using longitudinal
quantitative data to establish temporal ordering.
Seeking to address this need, the current study drew on
data from two waves of the nationally representative
Portraits of American Life Study (PALS) to examine the
extent to which viewing pornography at all and in greater
frequencies can inuence religious outcomes over time.
Specically, I focus on the extent to which pornography

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use may lead to changes in religious doubts, religious

salience, corporate religious practice, and private religious practice. Because the use patterns and effects of
pornography tend to differ by gender (Doran & Price,
2014; Perry, 2015a; Price, Patterson, Regnerus, &
Walley, 2015; Wright, 2013; Wright et al., 2013), I also
assessed the extent to which pornographys effects on
religious outcomes may vary between men and women.
Before proceeding with the analysis, the following section provides a brief overview of research on pornography
use and its relationship to religion in the United States. I
drew on this research to develop hypotheses about the
possible effects of pornography use on different aspects of
religious commitment.

Pornography Viewing And Religion

Numerous studies have recognized a close connection
between pornography and religion in the United States and
elsewhere (Baltazar et al., 2010; Carroll et al., 2008; Doran
& Price, 2014; Doring, 2009; Grubbs et al., 2015; Maddox
et al., 2011; Nelson et al., 2010; Patterson & Price, 2012;
Poulsen et al., 2013; Regnerus, 2007; Short et al., 2015;
Stack et al., 2004; Wright, 2013; Wright et al., 2013).
Religions typically teach that the only morally appropriate
place for sexual desires and behavior is in monogamous,
married, heterosexual relationships. Indeed, all three
Abrahamic faiths have explicit commands in their sacred
texts to avoid even looking at others lustfully, some even
equating this act itself with adultery.2 Consequently, religious groups strongly discourage sexually explicit media or
pornography as a form of fornication, inciting sexual desires
about persons outside of marriage, and encouraging solo
masturbation (Coughlin, 2009; Driscoll, 2009; Regnerus &
Uecker, 2011). Religious beliefs, commitments, and communities have thus always been important factors to consider in studies of pornography attitudes and consumption
(Bock, Beeghley, & Mixon, 1983; Grubbs et al., 2015;
Perry, 2016; Sherkat & Ellison, 1997; Wright, 2013).
Within the vast literature on porn use, the majority of
studies have focused on adolescents, college students, and
young adults. This is both due to the fact that (a) young
people, and especially college students, are more easily
accessible to researchers and open about their sexual activity
and (b) because young persons (men especially) are the ones
who report viewing pornography most frequently (Doring,
2009; Patterson & Price, 2012; Price et al., 2015; Regnerus &
Uecker, 2011; Wright, 2013; Wright et al., 2013). Studies of
porn use among adults, by comparison, have been far less
frequent. Regardless of the age, however, researchers have
consistently found that religiosity, by a variety of different

See Exodus 20.17; Matthew 5.28; Surah 79.4041.

measures, is negatively related to porn consumption. Among

the cases where religiosity and porn use are unrelated, some
scholars theorize that, because pornography consumption is
typically done in private, religious persons (and especially
males) might justify its use as preferable to sexual promiscuity. Such persons, then, can be highly religious while still
viewing pornography in private in similar frequency to irreligious persons (Abell, Steenbergh, & Boivin, 2006;
Goodson, McCormick, & Evans, 2001). More recently,
Grubbs et al. (2015) found that religiosity, in the form of a
multi-item scale, was negatively related to reported porn use
among college students; but among those who admitted using
pornography, religiosity was unrelated to how many hours
were spent viewing porn.
Among the majority of studies that report a strong,
negative association between pornography use and religiosity, the general assumption is that religiosity is the independent variable inuencing the occurrence or frequency of
porn use (Maddox et al., 2011; Poulsen et al., 2013; Stack
et al., 2004; Wright, 2013; Wright et al., 2013). Even within
cross-sectional studies, scholars occasionally use the language of directionality to express this assumption (e.g.,
Stack et al., 2004). Several recent studies, however, suggest
there may be alternative ways of viewing the relationship.
Baltazar et al. (2010) studied the perceived consequences of
Internet porn use among 751 men and women attending a
conservative Christian university. A considerable percentage
of students expressed that porn viewing had negatively
affected their spiritual lives. Among those who viewed
pornography, 43% of men and 20% of women felt that
viewing pornography worsened their relationship with
God/Christ. Further, 20% of men and 9% of women
reported that porn use contributed to their losing interest
in spiritual things. In a similar study, Nelson et al. (2010)
surveyed a group of 193 students at a religious university in
the Western United States. They found that frequent religious practice was negatively associated with porn viewing.
While acknowledging that religious practice might discourage porn consumption, the authors also theorized about the
possibility of reverse causality: Young persons who view
pornography may feel guilt or shame about their behavior
and consequently withdraw from such religious activities as
worship attendance or prayer. Consistent with this theory, in
their analysis of aggregated General Social Survey (GSS)
data, Patterson and Price (2012) reported that religious
service attendance is a strong predictor of having seen an
X-rated movie. While recognizing that attendance may
reduce ones likelihood to consume pornography, the
authors also proposed that Americans who view pornography less often might be more disposed to attending worship
services.
More recently, Grubbs et al.s (2015) study of college
students found that, among porn users, religiosity predicted
viewing oneself as addicted to pornography, even though
religiosity did not predict greater porn use. The authors
explained that religious persons often experience profound
guilt when violating deeply held moral convictions and

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DOES VIEWING PORN DIMINISH RELIGIOSITY OVER TIME?

speculated that if religious persons feel their persistent porn

use violates a sacred religious value, then harsh reactions
and pathological interpretations could result (p. 134).
These reactions for having violated a sacred value could
lead to severe negative evaluations of oneself and ones
spiritual life. Supporting this notion, Short et al. (2015)
studied Internet pornography use among 223 male and
female undergraduates. The authors reported sentiments
among the students that viewing Internet pornography interfered with their spirituality and relationship with God. They
theorized that students may experience a form of scrupulosity, which refers to a psychological disorder characterized by pathological guilt, often about violations of deeply
held religious convictions (Miller & Hedges, 2008).
Scrupulosity can impair social functioning, often causing
patients to withdraw physically and psychologically from
loved ones. Short et al. (2015) speculated that religious
persons may experience feelings of scrupulosity when viewing pornography because the activity violates their religious
convictions and identity, and this may cause them to withdraw from religion itself. Also consistent with this theory,
Perry (2015a) reported that religious parents who more
frequently viewed pornography were less likely to read or
talk with their children about God or religion, which he
theorized may be due to greater shame, cognitive dissonance, and scrupulosity stemming from frequent porn
viewing.
Last, previous work on religiosity and other forms of
culturally deviant behavior supports the theory that frequent porn use could reduce religiosity over time.
Criminology research (Benda, 1997; Benda & Corwyn,
1997, 2000), for instance, nds that not only does religiosity
diminish participation in various forms of deviant behavior like binge drinking, smoking marijuana, and criminal
activity, but there are reciprocal effects, with these sorts of
behaviors reacting back on actors, diminishing their religiosity and commitment to religious beliefs over time.

Summary And Hypotheses

While the general assumption is that religiosity leads to
lower levels of porn use, recent research suggests that more
frequent porn consumption, especially for religious persons,
is associated with guilt and embarrassment, potentially
diminishing interest in religious or spiritual activities while
also potentially creating feelings of scrupulosity that may
draw individuals away from religious community. While
greater religiosity most likely diminishes the use of pornography, more frequent porn viewing could also have a
reciprocal dampening effect on religious interest, possibly
due to the cognitive dissonance in the minds of religious
persons who believe pornography to be wrong yet still
consume it (Nelson et al., 2010). Drawing on recent, nationally representative, longitudinal data, the current study is the
rst to test whether more frequent pornography viewing
may not only be the result of lower levels of religiosity

but may in fact be a contributor to lower levels of religiosity

over time. Building on the research described, my rst
expectation was that earlier pornography viewing would
be associated with lower levels of religiosity later on.
Moreover, I predicted that the relationship would be linear:
that religiosity will decline in correspondence with increasing frequencies of earlier pornography use.
Research has also found that the frequencies, experiences, and effects of pornography viewing often differ by
gender. Men tend to look at pornography in far greater
frequencies than women, and men more often consume
pornography alone for the purposes of masturbation
(Maddox et al., 2011; Poulsen et al., 2013). Women, by
comparison, are more likely to look at pornography with a
partner as a part of sex (Bridges & Morokoff, 2011).
Women in general also tend to be more religious than men
in virtually every category (Putnam & Campbell, 2010).
Because men tend to consume pornography more frequently
and are already less strongly tied to religion than women, it
would be reasonable to expect that the negative effects of
earlier pornography use on religiosity over time would be
stronger for men than for women.

Method
Data
Data for this study were drawn from two waves of the
Portraits of American Life Study (PALS), which was elded
in 2006 and 2012 (Emerson & Sikkink, 20062012). PALS is
a nationally representative panel survey with questions focusing on a variety of topics, including social networks, moral and
political attitudes, and religious life. The original PALS sampling frame includes the civilian, noninstitutionalized household population in the continental United States who were
18 years of age or older at the time the survey was conducted.
Cluster sampling was used to achieve the goal of racially
diverse oversamples. Surveys were administered in English
or Spanish. For Wave 1, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 2,610 respondents in their homes, from April to
October 2006. The response rate was 58%. Interviewers used
audio computer-assisted self-interviewing (ACASI) for more
sensitive questions (e.g., how often they view pornography).
The second wave was conducted from March to September
2012, with 1,314 respondents successfully reinterviewed.
After accounting for respondents from 2006 who died or
were mentally incapacitated, the Wave 2 response rate was
53%. The second wave was administered through self-administered Web survey, computer-assisted telephone interviewing, and face-to-face interviewing. To assess whether attrition
or the different methods of survey administration in Wave 2
may have introduced bias into the sample, Table 1 provides a
comparison of Wave 1 to Wave 2 (after attrition) for all variables in the analysis. The results are virtually identical across
all variables, suggesting the attrition of respondents between
Wave 1 and 2 did not follow a clear pattern that would imply
3

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Table 1. Descriptive Statistics

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Variables
Outcome variables
Religious doubts b
Religious salience b
Religious service attendance b
Prayer b
Focal predictor variables
Pornography viewing at all a
Pornography viewing frequency
Religious doubts a
Religious salience a
Religious service attendance a
Prayer a
Religion variables
Religious tradition b
Conservative Protestant (ref.)
Mainline Protestant
Other Protestant
Catholic
Jewish
Other religion
Unafliated
Scripture fully inspired b
Sociodemographic variables
Age b
Male b
Married b
Number of children b
Bachelors or better b
Household income b
Race b
White (ref.)
Black
Hispanic
Asian
Native American
South b

Range

Full Sample

Full Sample

Men

Women

2006

20062012

20062012

20062012

M/%

SD

15
15
18
17

01
18
15
15
18
19

37%
2.0
1.7
3.3
3.6
4.8

01
01
01
01
01
01
01
01

33%
14%
4%
27%
2%
6%
16%
58%

1880
01
01
09
01
119

45%
48%
57%
NA
26%
9.2

01
01
01
01
01
01

70%
11%
13%
5%
1%
34%

1.7
.9
1.2
2.2
2.7

M/%

SD

M/%

SD

M/%

SD

1.7
3.3
3.7
3.9

0.9
1.3
2.3
2.0

1.8
3.1***
3.6**
3.6***

0.8
1.4
2.4
2.0

1.7
3.5
3.7
4.3

0.9
1.3
2.3
1.9

39%
1.8
1.7
3.4
3.8
4.9

1.6
0.9
1.2
1.9
2.6

59%***
2.7***
1.8
3.2***
3.7*
4.4***

2.1
0.9
1.3
2.3
2.7

20%
1.3
1.7
3.5
3.8
5.5

0.9
0.9
1.3
2.3
2.5

31%
10%
10%
24%
2%
5%
18%
70%
16

4.6

51
48%
58%
2.2
32%
9.4
69%
12%
14%
4%
1%
33%

29%*
10%
10%
24%
1%
6%
20%*
70%***
16

1.9
4.8

51
65%***
2.2
37%*
10.2***
71%
9%*
14%
5%
1%
34%

34%
9%
9%
25%
2%
4%
17%
66%
16

1.9
4.8

50
52%
2.1
31%
8.7

16

1.9
4.8

69%
14%
13%
3%
1%
33%

a
2006 PALS; b2012 PALS.
*Difference between men and women signicant at .05 level.
**Difference between men and women signicant at. 01 level.
***Difference between men and women signicant at. 001 level.

selection bias was introduced into the analyses. Nor is there

evidence that the different methods of survey administration at
Wave 2 biased the sample characteristics. PALS data include
sampling weights that, once applied, bring the PALS sample in
line with the U.S. Census Bureaus American Community
Survey, 2005 and 2011. Weights also adjust for nonresponse
in Wave 2. These weights were used in all analyses. The full
models ultimately used data from respondents who provided
valid responses to focal measures used in the analyses.

Pitcher, 1986). Thus, to assess the potential effects of pornography use on religiosity over time, outcomes for this study
included four measures of religiosity that tap these three
domains: consistency of belief in ones faith, or conversely,
the prevalence of religious doubt (belief); religious salience
(commitment); and corporate and private religious practice
(behavior). To measure religious doubts, respondents were
asked: In the past 6 years, how often have you had doubts
about your religious faith? Responses ranged from 1 = Never

Outcome Variables

3
In 2012, respondents were asked about religious doubts in the past
6 years (i.e., between the 2012 wave and the 2006 wave), while in 2006
respondents were asked about religious doubts in the past 3 years. While
the wording of the question is changed slightly, the coding of responses is
the same.

Religiosity is a complex concept to measure, and scholars

argue that it includes at least three dimensions: belief, commitment, and behavior (Cornwall, Albrecht, Cunningham, &
4

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DOES VIEWING PORN DIMINISH RELIGIOSITY OVER TIME?

to 5 = Every day or almost every day.3 To measure religious

salience, PALS asked respondents: How important is God or
spirituality in your life? Responses ranged from 1 = Not at all
important to 5 = By far the most important part of your life.
Corporate religious practice was measured with religious service attendance. Responses ranged from 1 = Never to
8 = Three times a week or more. Private religious practice
was measured with prayer frequency. In Wave 1, responses
ranged from 1 = Never to 9 = More than three times a day. In
Wave 2, responses ranged from 1 = Never to 7 = More than
once a day. The strong correlation between these two measures
(r = .65, p < .001) suggests that this slight difference in
coding is not a serious issue. The benet of using these
single-item measures of religiosity is that they allowed me
to assess pornographys effects on various dimensions of
religiosity in a straightforward way. The obvious downside, however, is that religiosity (and even dimensions of
religiosity) could be measured more comprehensively
using psychometric scales or indexes (see Grubbs et al.,
2015). Thus, I acknowledged the trade-offs inherent with
using single-item measures as I do here. Because responses
for these measures are all ve values or more, I estimated
ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models with
lagged dependent variables (LDVs). Because these measures are technically ordinal, I also estimated models with
ordinal logistic regression, and results were substantively
the same. However, the models did not meet the proportional odds assumption, and thus OLS regression was
chosen as the more appropriate modeling strategy.
Pornography Viewing
The focal independent variable for this study is how
frequently respondents viewed pornographic materials in
Wave 1. PALS asked respondents: In the past
12 months, how often have you viewed pornographic
materials? Responses ranged from 1 = Once a day or
more to 8 = Never. I reverse-coded these responses so
that higher scores on this measure indicated more frequent pornography viewing. Because this measure provides a range of porn viewing, it is superior to the porn
use measure in the GSS, which asks only whether a
respondent watched an X-rated movie in the previous
year (Doran & Price, 2014; Patterson & Price, 2012;
Price et al., 2015; Wright, 2013; Wright et al., 2013).
Certainly, social desirability could discourage honest
answers, given that porn consumption in larger amounts
is still viewed as morally objectionable. Emerson,
Sikkink, and James (2010) explained that for questions
like this, each PALS respondent wore earphones to hear
the prerecorded questions and then entered their
responses directly into the computer without the knowledge or help of the interviewer. This procedure would
help offset social desirability bias for this question.
Because the question about pornography consumption
was asked only in 2006, I included this measure only
in multivariate models.

Control Variables
Sociodemographic controls are all from Wave 2 of PALS.
These controls were selected based on previous studies of
religiosity over time (Froese & Bader, 2007; Hill, 2011;
Regnerus & Burdette, 2006; Schleifer & Chaves, 2014;
Snell, 2009; Vaidyanathan, 2011) and because of their correlation to both porn viewing and religiosity. Age is measured in years, from 19 to 80. Dummy variables are
constructed for gender (male = 1), education (bachelors
degree or higher = 1), and region (South = 1), and a series
of dummy variables were used for race (White = reference).
Household income is measured in categories from (1) less
than $5,000 to (19) $200,000 or more. Being married and
having children have both long been associated with religious behavior (Schleifer & Chaves, 2014), and thus I
included a dummy variable for whether a respondent was
married (married = 1) and a continuous measure of how
many children a respondent had (range 09).
Pornography attitudes and consumption, as well as
beliefs and behaviors regarding human sexuality more generally, differ across religiocultural milieus, and conservative
Protestants are known to have the strongest anti-pornography attitudes (Sherkat & Ellison, 1997). Moreover, it has
been shown that conservative Protestants tend to practice
their religion more faithfully than, say, mainline Protestants
or Catholics (Putnam & Campbell, 2010). And thus religiocultural conservatism may confound the relationship
between porn use and religiosity measures. Thus, I also
included additional religion controls for religious tradition
and theological conservatism, both of which are associated
with porn use (Perry, 2016) and religiosity (Froese & Bader,
2007; Schleifer & Chaves, 2014).4 Religious tradition is
measured with a modied version of the RELTRAD classication scheme (Steensland et al., 2000). Categories include
conservative Protestant, mainline Protestant, other
Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, other, and None or
unafliated.5 Conservative Protestants are the reference
category. Theological conservatism was measured with a
PALS question asking respondents about whether they
believed their religious text to be fully inspired by God.
Responses included 1 = Fully inspired by God, 2 = Partly

4
Because of the obvious correlation between these controls for religious conservatism and the religiosity outcomes, models were run with and
without the religious conservatism measures. In each model, the effects of
earlier porn use on every religiosity outcome were stronger without these
controls in place, and thus the inclusion of these controls actually made the
results presented in the analysis here more conservative.
5
I include those who indicated none or unafliated with respect to
religious tradition because these persons often hold religious beliefs and
practice a religion, though they do not necessarily identify as such (Putnam
& Campbell, 2010). For example, in Wave 2 of PALS, over 60% of
unafliated persons considered God or spirituality at least somewhat
important, over 50% prayed at least occasionally, and about one-third
attended worship services. Moreover, supplementary analyses without
these unafliated respondents included in models made the effects of
pornography on religiosity outcomes stronger, and thus I present the more
conservative estimates with them included.

PERRY

inspired by God, 3 = Not inspired by God, and 4 = I have

never heard of the religious text. I dichotomized this measure so that 1 = Fully inspired by God, 0 = Other.
Respondents with a 1 for this measure would be more likely
to view the moral teachings of their sacred text as authoritative. For descriptive statistics on all variables, see Table 1.

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Analytic Strategy
Table 1 presents basic descriptive statistics for all variables in the analysis. This provides a general overview of
pornography viewing, focal predictors, and controls for the
full sample and by gender. Table 2 presents zero-order
correlations to establish important bivariate relationships
between pornography viewing and religiosity measures at
both Wave 1 and Wave 2. Multivariate models in Tables 3
through 5 consist of OLS LDV models estimating the
effect of porn viewing at Wave 1 on later religiosity measures at Wave 2, while controlling for previous scores on
these religiosity measures at Wave 1 (lagged dependent
variable) and other relevant correlates. These models
have been frequently used in previous studies of change
in religiosity measures over time (e.g., Hill, 2011;
Regnerus & Burdette, 2006; Snell, 2009; Vaidyanathan,
2011). While change-score models (e.g., xed effects) are
helpful for handling the problem of omitted variable bias
caused by time-invariant omitted variables (Schleifer &
Chaves, 2014), estimating these models would not be
possible since the question about pornography was not
asked in 2012. Thus I could not test for whether a change
in respondents frequency of porn consumption between
2006 and 2012 inuenced a change in religiosity measures
during the same time frame. While some scholars have
recommended change-score models over LDV models
(e.g., Johnson, 2005), other scholars (e.g., Keele & Kelly,
2006; Wilkins, 2014) have shown with Monte Carlo simulations that LDV models with OLS generally produce
accurate estimates with no more bias introduced than alternative estimation strategies. And studies using both LDV
and xed effects modeling strategies report similar outcomes for each (e.g., Audia & Teckchandani, 2010).

Moreover, even critiques of LDV models argue that such

models are more likely to cause Type 2 error, suppressing
signicant effects rather than articially inating them
(Achen, 2000), in which case, LDV models would likely
yield more conservative estimates regarding the focal
impendent variable for this study.
Table 3 presents OLS LDV models testing whether viewing any pornography at all at Wave 1 predicts declines in the
four religiosity measures at Wave 2. To better understand
how porn frequency relates to religiosity, Tables 4 and 5 use
the full eight-value measure of porn viewing at Wave 1.
Table 4 presents OLS LDV models predicting religious
doubts and religious salience in 2012, and Table 5 presents
OLS LDV models predicting corporate religious practice
(worship attendance) and private religious practice (prayer)
in 2012. Separate analyses were also conducted to test for
signicant moderating effects between gender and porn use
on religious outcomes. Full models for the OLS LDV analyses are straightforward (Johnson, 2005):
R2012 b0 b1 R2006 b2 Porn2006 BX
where R2012 is the predicted score for the religiosity measure
in Wave 2, b0 is the intercept term, b1-2 are unstandardized
regression coefcients; R2006 is the religiosity measure in
Wave 1 (the lagged dependent variable); Porn2006 is the
respondents reported frequency of pornography viewing
in Wave 1; X is a vector of control variables; B is a vector
of unstandardized regression coefcients for X; and is the
random disturbance term. Models for Tables 3 through 5
include unstandardized beta coefcients and standard errors.

Results
Descriptive results in Table 1 demonstrate that about 39%
of American adults in Wave 1 viewed some sort of pornographic materials in the previous 12 months. Consistent
with previous research, almost three times as many men
(59%) viewed pornography as women (20%). Comparing

Table 2. Correlation Matrix of Key Variables in the Analysis

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
a

Predictors

10

Pornography viewing at all a

Pornography viewing frequency a
Religious doubts a
Religious salience a
Religious service attendance a
Prayer a
Religious doubts b
Religious salience b
Religious service attendance b
Prayer b

1.00
.74***
.15***
.27***
.24***
.29***
.15***
.32***
.24***
.31***

1.00
.16***
.28***
.25***
.32***
.16***
.31***
.24***
.27***

1.00
.21***
.08**
.15***
.40***
.21***
.12***
.18***

1.00
.58***
.64***
.12***
.68***
.52***
.60***

1.00
.52***
.06*
.52***
.74***
.51***

1.00
.09**
.61***
.45***
.65***

1.00
.23***
.12***
.17***

1.00
.56***
.67***

1.00
.61***

1.00

2006 PALS; b2012 PALS.

p .10; *p .05; **p .01; ***p .001 (two-tailed tests).

DOES VIEWING PORN DIMINISH RELIGIOSITY OVER TIME?

Table 3. Ordinary Least Squares Regression Predicting

Religiosity Measures on Ever Viewing Pornography

Predictors
Pornography
viewing at all a
Religious
doubts

Religious
Service
Attendanceb

Table 3. (Continued)

Religious
Doubts b

Religious
Salience b

.126*

.202**

.149

.245**

Native
American

(.064)

(.106)

(.094)

South

(.061)
.344***

Predictors
Prayerb

Constant
(.029)

Religious
salience

Adjusted R2
N

.547***
a

Religious
Doubts b

Religious
Salience b

.660

1.101*

(.486)
.028
(.055)
1.360***
(.155)
.196
960

(.502)
.044
(.057)
1.162***
(.168)
.561
1160

Religious
Service
Attendanceb
.217
(.712)
.086
(.096)
.284
(.248)
.605
1161

Prayerb
1.014
(.628)
.166*
(.084)
1.613***
(.230)
.555
1156

(.026)
Religious service
attendance

Note. Unstandardized betas with standard errors in parentheses.

2006 PALS; b2012 PALS.
+
p .10; *p .05; **p .01; ***p .001 (two-tailed tests).

.653***

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(.022)
Prayer

.374***
(.017)

Conservative
Protestant b
(ref.)
Mainline
Protestant b
Other Protestant b
b

Catholic
Jewish

Other religion
Unafliated

Scripture fully
inspired b
Age

Male

Married

Number of
children b
Bachelors or
better b
Household
income b
White b (ref.)
Black b
Hispanic
Asian

.051

.018

.379*

(.093)
.041
(.091)
.038
(.072)
.107
(.221)
.080
(.133)
.132
(.105)
.192**

(.101)
.234*
(.099)
.171*
(.079)
.580**
(.213)
.075
(.136)
.483***
(.091)
.605***

(.061)
.003
(.002)
.031
(.057)
.108+
(.063)
.020

(.065)
.005*
(.002)
.099+
(.058)
.110+
(.064)
.000

(.107)
.010**
(.003)
.052
(.097)
.198+
(.108)
.009

(.095)
.005+
(.003)
.047
(.087)
.192*
(.096)
.029

(.016)
.063

(.017)
.067

(.028)
.124

(.025)
.123

(.062)
.006

(.063)
.014*

(.106)
.005

(.093)
.023*

(.007)

(.007)

(.011)

(.010)

.139+
(.082)
.094
(.083)
.287*
(.130)

.344***
(.089)
.212*
(.087)
.058
(.135)

.544***
(.149)
.393**
(.145)
.580**
(.226)

.454***
(.132)
.202
(.128)
.078
(.211)

(.169)
.106
(.165)
.219+
(.132)
1.041**
(.353)
.484*
(.228)
.852***
(.153)
.554***

.172
(.150)
.060
(.146)
.169
(.117)
.677*
(.314)
.048
(.202)
.655***
(.136)
.779***

(Continued )

scores on the full eight-value measure of porn frequency

also reveals that men tend to view pornography more often
than women. Also consistent with previous research,
women tend to be more religious than men on each dimension of religiosity, except for religious doubts. At both
waves, women reported higher religious salience, more frequent religious service attendance, and higher prayer frequency than men. It is also important to note that there is no
evidence of a decline in religiosity across key measures
among those in the sample at Waves 1 and 2. This provides
more condence that any net declines in religiosity predicted by earlier porn use are not an artifact of religious
decline in general.
Looking at the zero-order correlations in Table 2 shows
that the measure for ever viewing pornography and the full
porn frequency measure indicate nearly identical correlation
coefcients across all religiosity measures. Moreover, it is
also apparent that the correlations between viewing pornography (at all or more frequently) and religiosity measures
are as expected and similar for both waves. That is, while
pornography viewing is measured in Wave 1, its correlation
with religiosity measures at Wave 2 is approximately the
same as it was with these measures at Wave 1.
How does viewing pornography at all potentially contribute to a decline in religiosity over time? Table 3 tests for
whether consuming pornography at all at Wave 1 predicts
later religiosity outcomes while controlling for the lagged
dependent variable and other correlates. As predicted, persons who viewed pornography at all in Wave 1 reported
lower levels of religiosity at Wave 2. Specically, persons
who viewed pornography reported more frequent religious
doubts, lower levels of religious salience, and lower prayer
frequency. While the sign for religious service attendance
was also negative, the effect was not statistically signicant
at the .05 level. Figure 1 presents predicted values for the

PERRY

Table 4. Ordinary Least Squares Regression Predicting

Religious Doubts and Salience on Frequency of Pornography Use
Religious Doubtsb Religious Salienceb

Predictors
Pornography viewing frequency a
a

Religious doubts

Religious salience

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Jewish

Other religion
Unafliated

Scripture fully inspired

Age

Male

Married

Number of children

Bachelors or better

Household income
White b (ref.)
Black b
Hispanic
Asian

Native American
South

Catholic

Constant
Adjusted R2
N

.058***
(.018)

.554***
(.026)

Conservative Protestant
Mainline Protestant b
Other Protestant

.049**
(.018)
.342***
(.029)

(ref.)
.038
(.093)
.039
(.091)
.042
(.072)
.097
(.220)
.079
(.132)
.135
(.104)
.194***
(.061)
.003
(.002)
.018
(.057)
.104+
(.063)
.019
(.016)
.065
(.062)
.005
(.007)

.038
(.102)
.237*
(.099)
.181*
(.079)
.573**
(.213)
.081
(.136)
.480***
(.091)
.611***
(.064)
.005*
(.002)
.097+
(.058)
.101
(.064)
.001
(.017)
.066
(.063)
.014*
(.007)

.151+
(.082)
.107
(.083)
.282*
(.130)
.630
(.485)
.031
(.055)
1.328***
(.156)
.198
960

.355***
(.089)
.229**
(.089)
.060
(.135)
1.050*
(.502)
.041
(.057)
1.192***
(.171)
.561
1160

Note. Unstandardized betas with standard errors in parentheses.

a
2006 PALS; b2012 PALS.
+
p .10; *p .05; **p .01; ***p .001 (two-tailed tests).

religiosity measures in Wave 2 by whether respondents

viewed pornography at Wave 1. A clear relationship can
be seen for each religiosity measure, even for religious
service attendance, which was not statistically signicant.
Any porn use at Wave 1 was associated with declines in
8

religious salience and behavior and an increase in religious

doubts at Wave 2.
While viewing pornography at all might predict
declining religiosity over time, how does the frequency
of porn use relate to these religiosity measures? Tables 4
and 5 predict religious outcomes at Wave 2 with all the
controls included in Table 3, except with the full eightvalue measure of pornography viewing. This allowed me
to assess whether the relationships between earlier porn
viewing and religiosity over time follows a linear pattern
as porn viewing increases, or whether the relationship
might be more complex.6 Table 4 predicts religious
doubts and salience at Wave 2. Pornography viewing
was signicantly associated with both measures of religiosity. Persons who reported viewing pornography
more frequently at Wave 1 reported more frequent religious doubts (b = .049, p .01) and lower levels of
religious salience (b = .058, p .001) at Wave 2.
Figure 2 illustrates these relationships with some unexpected trends. At the top of Figure 2, the trend is clear
that as pornography consumption at Wave 1 increases,
religious doubts at Wave 2 increase slowly. While there
is a slight dip back down at the most extreme value of
pornography consumption (once a day or more), these
are a small number of cases that may well be outliers.
Overall, the effect of porn frequency on religious doubting over time appears fairly linear. The trend for religious salience, however, is somewhat different. There is
a clear initial dip in religious salience at Wave 2 as
pornography viewing at Wave 1 increases, with the lowest religious salience coming at two to three times a
month. At higher frequencies of porn viewing, however, the trend in religious salience later on appears to
increase slightly. While ancillary analyses revealed that a
quadratic expression did not adequately describe this
trend as well as a linear expression, the pattern seems
to be that more frequent pornography consumption
reduces religious salience over time up to the frequency
of about two to three times a month. After that point,
religious salience does not decline.
Models 1 and 3 in Table 5 predict religious service
attendance and prayer, respectively, at Wave 1 with the
same models found in Table 4. In these models, the frequency with which someone views pornography at Wave 1
is not a signicant predictor of either religiosity measure at
6
I included persons who reported never viewing pornography in the
multivariate models for Tables 4 and 5 to demonstrate the full relationship
between pornography-viewing frequency and religiosity over time.
However, when I remove this group and look only at the effects of porn
frequency on religion outcomes among those who ever view pornography
(similar to the approach used by Grubbs et al., 2015), the results are
substantively the same. This is a remarkable nding, since removing
those who never view pornography reduces the models to less than 455
persons each, which obviously reduces the statistical signicance somewhat. I have included the tables and corresponding gures for these relationships in the online supplement so that readers can compare the
outcomes for themselves.

DOES VIEWING PORN DIMINISH RELIGIOSITY OVER TIME?

Table 5. Ordinary Least Squares Regression Predicting

Religious Practices on Frequency of Pornography Use
Religious Service
Attendanceb
Predictors

Model 1

Model 2

Model 3

Model 4

Pornography viewing
frequency a

.027

.225*

.007

.310**

(.030)

(.115)
.026+

(.027)

(.101)
.040**

Pornography viewing
(quadratic)

.654***

Religious service
attendance a

(.022)

Other Protestant

Other religion
Unafliated

Scripture fully inspired

b

Male

Married

Number of children

Bachelors or better

Household income
White b (ref.)
Black b
Hispanic
Asian

Native American
South

(.015)

Catholic
Jewish

(.013)

.380*** .378***
(.017)
(.017)

Conservative Protestant
(ref.)
Mainline Protestant b

Age

(.015)
.026+

Prayer

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Prayerb

Constant
Adjusted R2
N

.388*
.383*
(.170)
(.169)
.109
.099
(.165)
(.165)
.224+
.219+
(.132)
(.132)
1.038** 1.042**
(.353)
(.353)
.489*
.501*
(.228)
(.228)
.851*** .851***
(.153)
(.152)
.564***
.543***
(.106)
(.107)
.011***
.010**
(.003)
(.003)
.033
.064
(.098)
(.099)
.193+
.199+
(.108)
(.108)
.011
.009
(.028)
(.028)
.126
.116
(.106)
(.106)
.005
.006
(.011)
(.011)
.550***
(.149)
.401**
(.145)
.590**
(.226)
.212
(.712)
.084
(.096)
.255
(.252)
.605
1161

.544***
(.149)
.384**
(.145)
.579**
(.226)
.184
(.712)
.083
(.096)
.517+
(.291)
.606
1161

.171
(.151)
.065
(.146)
.170
(.117)
.670*
(.315)
.053
(.203)
.652***
(.136)
.810***
(.095)
.007*
(.003)
.125
(.087)
.189*
(.096)
.033
(.025)
.111
(.093)
.024*
(.010)

.164
(.150)
.049
(.146)
.162
(.117)
.676*
(.314)
.076
(.202)
.651***
(.136)
.775***
(.095)
.005+
(.003)
.077
(.088)
.199*
(.096)
.030
(.025)
.128
(.093)
.023*
(.010)

.457***
(.132)
.208
(.128)
.050
(.211)
.958
(.630)
.158+
(.084)
1.441***
(.236)
.552
1156

.448***
(.132)
.179
(.128)
.058
(.211)
.920
(.628)
.154+
(.084)
1.840***
(.268)
.556
1156

Note. Unstandardized betas with standard errors in parentheses.

a
2006 PALS; b 2012 PALS.
+
p .10; *p .05; **p .01; ***p .001 (two-tailed tests).

Wave 2.7 Subsequent analyses revealed that the relationship

between porn frequency and these religious practices was
curvilinear for both, in which case a quadratic term would
be included to test for this effect. The model is as follows.
R2012 b0 b1 R2006 b2 Porn2006 2 b3 Porn2006 BX

The model is identical to the OLS LDV model described in

the Method section, but with porn use at Wave 1 squared
(b2Porn20062). With the quadratic term included, the linear
term (b3Porn2006) describes the initial slope (downward),
while the quadratic term describes the corresponding change
(upward). Models 2 and 4 include the full models with
quadratic term, and the effect of porn frequency becomes
statistically signicant for both religious service attendance
and prayer. Moreover, the quadratic term for both is either
signicant or marginally signicant.
Figure 3 illustrates these curvilinear relationships.
Similar to the gure for porn frequency and religious salience, those who viewed pornography more frequently at
Wave 1 initially showed declining levels of religious service
attendance and prayer at Wave 2, with the nadir coming at a
porn-viewing frequency of two to three times a month. As
porn viewing at Wave 1 becomes more frequent, however,
religious service attendance and prayer both increase consistently to the point where those who viewed pornography
once a day or more are almost back up to average levels
of religious service attendance and prayer for the sample.
The last question to consider is whether the effects of pornography in the full sample differ across gender. Men both tend to
view pornography at a far greater frequency than women and
report lower levels of religiosity than women (see Table 1), so it
would be intuitive to think that more frequent porn viewing
might have a stronger effect on the religious lives of men later
on. Interaction terms were included for each model in Tables 3,
4, and 5 between the porn consumption variable gender, and
none were statistically signicant at the .05 level. However, the
interaction term for any porn viewing and being male predicted
lower levels of religious service attendance to a marginal degree
(table not shown), suggesting that viewing porn at all may have
a stronger, negative effect on religious attendance for men than
for women. Thus, the expectation that the effects of porn use on
religiosity over time would be stronger for men is only weakly
supported with respect to behavioral dimensions, and not at all
for belief or commitment dimensions.

As I show in the online supplement, when those who never view

pornography are excluded from the analysis, porn-viewing frequency at
Wave 1 is actually positively related to prayer frequency at Wave 2.
Nevertheless, viewing the trend line for this outcome suggests that the
effect is substantively the same as that presented here, namely, a slightly
curvilinear relationship.
7

PERRY

Religious Doubts

Religious Salience

2
1

2.9*

1.6

No Porn

Ever View Porn

3.7
2.8**

2
1

No Porn

Religious Service Attendance

7

5
4.1
3

4.4

No Porn

Ever View Porn

3.2**

No Porn

Ever View Porn

Figure 1. Predicted values from OLS LDV models predicting religiosity measures at Wave 2 on whether one ever viewed pornography at all at Wave 1.
*Differences signicant at .05 level; **Differences signicant at .01 level.

Religious Service Attendance

Religious Doubts

sample mean = 3.7

3

sample mean = 1.7

1

Never

Once or
Twice

A Few
Times

Once a
Month

2-3 Times a
Month

Once a
Week

A Few
Times a
Week

sample mean = 3.3

3

Never

Once or
Twice

A Few
Times

Once a
Month

2-3 Times a
Month

Once a
Week

A Few
Times a
Week

Once a Day
or More

sample mean = 3.9

Never

Once or
Twice

A Few
Times

Once a
Month

2-3 Times a
Month

Once a
Week

A Few
Times a
Week

Once a Day
or More

Figure 2. Predicted values of religious doubts and religious salience at

Wave 2 across values of pornography viewing frequency at Wave 1.
Religious doubts: range 1 = Never to 5 = Every day or almost every day.
Religious salience: range 1 = Not at all important to 5 = By far the most
important part of your life.

10

Once a Day
or More

Prayer Frequency

Religious Salience

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Prayer Frequency

8
6

Ever View Porn

Never

Once or
Twice

A Few
Times

Once a
Month

2-3 Times a
Month

Once a
Week

A Few
Times a
Week

Once a Day
or More

Figure 3. Predicted values of religious service attendance and prayer at

Wave 2 across values of pornography viewing frequency at Wave 1.
Religious service attendance: range 1 = Never to 8 = Three times a week
or more; never is omitted. Prayer: range 1 = Never to 7 = More than three
times a day.

DOES VIEWING PORN DIMINISH RELIGIOSITY OVER TIME?

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Discussion and Conclusions

While some scholars have theorized that religiosity might be
negatively affected by porn use (Baltazar et al., 2010; Nelson
et al., 2010; Perry, 2015a; Short et al., 2015), the current study is
the rst to employ nationally representative, longitudinal data to
assess whether earlier porn use predicts later religiosity and
according to what patterns. On the whole, results support the
notion that viewing pornography can reduce religiosity over
time. Adults who reported viewing pornography at all at Wave
1 reported more frequent religious doubt, lower levels of religious salience, and lower frequency of prayer compared to
persons who never viewed pornography. When considering
how frequency of porn viewing might impact religiosity over
time, however, results suggest that the relationship between
porn use and religiosity is not necessarily linear. More frequent
porn viewing at Wave 1 did correspond to higher levels of
religious doubt at Wave 2, showing a fairly linear pattern.
However, earlier porn viewing predicted declines in other religiosity measures only to a point. Specically, those who viewed
pornography more often at Wave 1 reported lower levels of
religious salience, religious service attendance, and prayer frequency at Wave 2 until the two to three times a month mark.
Beyond that frequency of pornography viewing, religiosity
either leveled off or actually increased in a curvilinear fashion.
Last, ndings showed that these trends generally hold for both
men and women with the possible exception of porn use negatively affecting the worship attendance of men more so than
women.
These ndings hold a variety of implications for research
on pornography in the United States as well as research on
religion. As pornography has become more pervasive and
more culturally accepted within the United States, researchers have sought to understand the potential consequences
for important social institutions, most prominently romantic
and family relationships (Bridges & Morokoff, 2011; Doran
& Price, 2014; Manning, 2006; Perry, 2015b, 2016; Poulsen
et al., 2013; Willoughby, Carroll, Busby, & Brown, 2016).
Results from this study suggest that more pervasive pornography use might negatively inuence the health and character of American religion as well (Perry, 2015a). If
Americans who view pornography report declining levels
of religious salience, belief, collective practice, and private
practice over time, it could be that more pervasive pornography may serve as a secularizing agent, helping to
weaken religious vitality among those who consistently
view it. This would not necessarily be attributable to the
content of the pornography as much as the persistent
violation of religious morals and norms surrounding sexually explicit materials. Such violations might lead to discouragement, disaffection, or what Short et al. (2015)
referred to as scrupulosity, a severe withdrawal from
loved onesincluding ones family, religious community,
and perhaps ones deitydue to having (repeatedly) transgressed deeply held moral convictions. To that effect, it
could be that if religious groups grow more tolerant of
sexually explicit materials, any negative effects of

pornography use on religious outcomes may dissipate.

That is unlikely to take place any time soon, however,
considering the growing outcry and rallying among conservative Christian groups to stamp out porn use within
their ranks (Coughlin, 2009; Driscoll, 2009).
How are we to understand the apparent curvilinear relationship between pornography viewing frequency at Wave 1
and religious service attendance and prayer (and to some
degree religious salience) at Wave 2? Why would later
religiosity actually increase corresponding to the most
extreme levels of porn viewing earlier on? There are several
possibilities that may be tested in future studies. First, it
may be that those who view pornography at the highest
frequencies early on have completely detached their porn
viewing from their religious lives. As theorized by earlier
scholars (Abell et al., 2006; Goodson et al., 2001), it may be
that persons nd adequate psychological rationales to justify
their frequent use of pornography, so much that they can
simultaneously be quite frequent porn consumers while also
being highly religious. Research on moral psychology suggests that persons often fashion their moral values to justify
their impulses and dispositions rather than the reverse
(Haidt, 2012), and thus persons who enjoy regularly viewing pornography may have successfully rationalized the
practice to experience no moral conict and thus no related
guilt or religious withdrawal. Relatedly, it must also be kept
in mind that greater levels of religious practice do not
necessarily amount to traditionalist sexual views in the
rst place. Research suggests that Americans are increasingly holding on to religious practices and spirituality while
distancing themselves from traditional religious identities
and afliations (Baker & Smith, 2015; Chaves, 2011;
Putnam & Campbell, 2010). It could be Americans who
more frequently view pornography are more likely to be
of the sort who see no severe moral conict between viewing sexually explicit materials and their religious beliefs and
behavior, and thus feel comfortable doing both. Ironically,
then, it would apparently be more conducive to higher
religious practice for persons to view pornography regularly
without connecting it with religious guilt.
For an alternative explanation, studies of addiction suggest
that those who feel helpless in their addiction often elicit supernatural help (Avants, Warburton, & Margolin, 2001;
Jarusiewicz, 2000). Indeed, twelve-step programs that seek to
help persons struggling with addictions ubiquitously include
teachings about surrendering to a higher power, and a rising
number of conservative Christian twelve-step programs make
this connection even more explicit (Brown, Whitney, Schneider,
& Vega, 2006). It could very well be that persons who use
pornography at the most extreme levels (i.e., use levels that
might be characteristic of a compulsion or addiction) are actually pushed toward religion over time rather than pulled away
from it. Another possible explanation could be that, while
relatively moderate levels of porn use could have a secularizing
effect on otherwise average people, more extreme levels of porn
use may be reective of certain personality types who are
particularly drawn to religion. Future studies would ideally
11

PERRY

draw on qualitative interviews with those who use pornography

at low, moderate, and extreme levels to gain better insight into
the ways porn consumption can inuence religious outcomes.

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Limitations
Several limitations are worth acknowledging in order to outline
directions for future research. The strength and contribution of
this analysis is that the panel design permits the determination of
temporal precedence and directionality of effect between porn
consumption in Wave 1 and religiosity measures in Wave 2. Yet
the fact that the question about porn use was not asked in Wave
2 precludes the possibility of determining whether and to what
extent measures of religiosity at Time 1 predict pornography use
at Time 2. While it is almost certainly the case that religiosity
does in fact predict porn use and frequency, it would be informative to compare the bidirectional effects of porn use and
religiosity over time. Future research would ideally make use
of data that contains measures for both pornography and religiosity at two different time periods so as to view which factor
more strongly predicts the other. This data limitation also precluded the possibility of other estimation procedures that rely on
changing scores, like xed or random effects. Though, as
explained, OLS LDV models generally provide accurate (even
conservative) estimates and are commonly used for studies of
religious change over time, change-score models would provide
another test to ensure that omitted variable bias was not inuencing the effects.
Second, while the pornography measure in PALS is an
improvement on other measures that ask only whether a respondent looks at pornography at all (e.g., the GSS), the measure
does not specify the type of pornographic materials that are
being viewed. It is possible that certain types of sexually explicit
media are more damaging to religiosity over time than others.
For instance, more standard fare or soft-core types of sexual
media are more culturally acceptable than, say, hard-core or
fetish types of media and thus may produce differing levels of
shame, cognitive dissonance, or scrupulosity, affecting religious
belief, commitment, and behavior in different ways. Future
quantitative research would thus benet from measures that
more explicitly dene what pornography means for the
respondent. Qualitative interviews would obviously also help
in this regard as well.
Last, as acknowledged, the religious outcome measures are
single items, which may not provide the most comprehensive
picture of pornographys inuence on religiosity over time.
Following the example of Grubbs et al. (2015), future studies
might effectively include scales or indexes based on a variety
of indicators to measure religiosity more comprehensively
rather than along particular dimensions as done here.

Supplemental Material
Supplementary data for this article can be accessed on
the publishers web site.
12

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