Pornography addiction: attention interference and severity of behavior

Abstract

Introduction: The increased use of Information and Comunication Tecnologies (ICT) and internet in our society has boosted new forms of addiction. Because of its public health concerns, one of the most important is cybersex addiction, and in particular excessive and problematic pornography consumption. Large number of studies pointed out that in some people, pornography viewing can be excessive and uncontrolled, creating several problems in different areas of life. For this reason, it is important to explore the underlying factors and maintainers in this problem. It is postulated that one of these factors could be the pornographic content ability to attract and consume attention resources (cue reactivity).
The purpose of this study is to explore the relation between the attention interference created by the pornography contents viewing and severity of this behaviour. Method: To assess this attentional bias, we developed and applied an experimental task to a group of participants whose age oscillates between 18 and 35 years old. The experimental task was based on a Stroop task paradigm: participants concurrently answer to this attentional task when they were exposed to four types of contents (pornographic video, sitcom, video game and a low interactive content -a man reading a newspaper-). Participants received the premise of ignoring videos and focusing on answer quickly and accurately the Stroop task. Results: Level of attention interference created by pornography compared to other contents was assessed through the comparison between average reaction times and right answer and mistakes of each trial. These results, where we showed significant differences between the experimental conditions, will be exposed in detail during the presentation of the study.
Conclusions: This study supports, on the one hand, the big ability of the different multimedia contents (among them, pornography), to attract and consume attentional resources; on the other hand, it also highlights the strong relation with the ability of attention interference that have their addictive potential. Therefore, it is important to include new clinical approaches that address this aspect at different levels: prevention, assessment, and treatment.