One thing to consider is that even if porn is not misleading men on average, it may be misleading men on the tail.
That is, suppose without porn, some men would think that no women like to be choked, and some other men think that some women like being choked. Then they watch porn, and their estimates of whether women like to be choked increase.
So then, some of the men who thought no women like to be choked now think some women like to be choked, and some of the men who thought that some women like to be choked now think all women like to be choked.
In that case, as you show, the average accuracy of men's predictions will increase; now men on average predict that some women like being choked, whereas before on average they predicted that few women like being choked.
But in this model, the rate of overestimates has massively increased as a result of porn! In this model, before porn, no men thought all women liked getting choked, but now some men do. And these men might decide to choke women during sex, based on the assumption that of course she likes it, which is presumably what the people concerned about porn misleading men are talking about.
So misleadingness cannot be understood unidimensionally; there are many different men and some may be mislead while others are coming to a better understanding.
Whole concept of porn influencing men view on women preferences is a bit of science-fiction for me. What porn represents is just what men like to watch. It's just a product chosen by consumers. If I eat Big Macs often it doesn't make me think it's healthy or that everyone else finds them tasty. I personally love porn, especially because of my preference for threesomes, but the fact that I watch tons of FFM threesomes never made me think that average woman would like to invite her friend to have sex with her partner. Also making guess about random women is strange, I may not know what are the statistics for ordinary woman but I may be perfectly good in predicting what women I choose like - simply because I match with them based on mutual characteristics.
So all in all final result of this survey kinda confirm my point of view, porn usage is almost meaningless in predicting opposite sex preferences. Mistaking women for being less kinky is based more on social/cultural bias than what we consume as carefully picked up product as porn video.
I think you vastly overestimate how much communication about sexual preferences happens in a conservative marriage scenario - in general my experience in those circles is nobody talks about sex to anyone of the opposite sex (women talk to each other about strategies for dealing with it, not so much about enjoying it, obviously I don't know what the men were talking about), and the clueless men do attempt surprises that the women, who are primed to tolerate rather than enjoy sex, do not appreciate.
I am hesitant to publicly go into details about how I cleaned suspicious results out of my data (don’t wanna give people a handbook), but am happy to share this with other researchers privately."
+1 and well done! Savvy researchers already know what you're doing.
Seems like porn either has no effect or helps with men's estimations. That makes sense to me since porn industry tries to attract viewers and show them what they like to see. I think the argument against porn assumes that what men like is different from what women like which I think is wrong. The evolution requires both sexes to be attractive to each other and have similar sexual interests. I have seen my theory matches your data from the big kink survey.
How about the statement "Young boys who are about to start sexual relationships will get the wrong understanding of what women like"? I would love to see a graph about how accurately young boys with no sexual experience (so one or less sexual partner and age as low as the data allows) estimate women's preference by their amount of porn consumption.
1. The average man slightly over-predicts how much the average woman is into things.
2. In a randomly-selected sexual encounter between a man and a woman, the average man slightly under-predicts how much that woman is into things.
#1 isn't exactly what's reported, but I'm inclined to say the paid women are more representative of the general population, and the Twitter follower women are probably selected for being more into things (which is plausible for people who follow a sex worker). And #1 is true if you take only the sample of paid women.
Interesting post. I would not have expect as many women to be into some of these things as your survey reports, e.g. choking.
A related question is to what extent does porn make men interested in trying things, believe thst it is appropriate to try things? E.g. in you survey men weren't all that far off on predicting how likely it is that women like anal sex (not very), but I could see porn use making men more interested in trying it or more willing to try to convince their partner to try it as a favor to him.
I also would be interested in how porn impacts prediction of degree of preference. Men might accurately predict that women aren't into something regardless of porn use, but it might cause them to assume something is a thing something women are into, but still an acceptable ask, while women are likely to rank it as unacceptable.
The opening paragraphs summarizing your study could not have been better. Data science is so much more fun with tongue-in-cheek “you were right for the wrong reasons.” Fantastic work and great delivery!
I think you didn't take into account that choking is a recent fashion. Well, maybe not that recent, but at least of the last 10-20 years. Therefore, older men and women would not be as much into it as younger people. Besides, there are serious safety concerns about heavy choking involving carotid occlusion or breath stopping. So, using it to determine how much people are into rough sex is not accurate. Age and risk-taking are important confounds related to choking.
I have the impression that porn preference correlates with unrestricted sociosexuality - men who use porn are more likely to want to have casual sex with lots of different women. (E.g. I once did a factor analysis of sexual interests and found "watching porn" to load on the sociosexuality factor.) I think this makes sense from a theoretical perspective; porn isn't really made for romantics, and committed relationship porn sort of seems like an oxymoron. (I mean, you can have more romantic versions of porn, but it will still depict a total stranger...)
Whenever people find that porn correlates with stuff, I always wonder if it is confounded with unrestricted sociosexuality. I would tend to think that it is best to control for unrestricted sociosexuality, though I suspect moral zealots would instead argue that porn causes unrestricted sociosexuality and that therefore one shouldn't control for it.
I wonder how much of this is confounded by people who seek out novelty. People who consume porn regularly might have a propensity towards seeking out novelty generally, so ADHD sufferers, BPD might be getting selected for.
One thing to consider is that even if porn is not misleading men on average, it may be misleading men on the tail.
That is, suppose without porn, some men would think that no women like to be choked, and some other men think that some women like being choked. Then they watch porn, and their estimates of whether women like to be choked increase.
So then, some of the men who thought no women like to be choked now think some women like to be choked, and some of the men who thought that some women like to be choked now think all women like to be choked.
In that case, as you show, the average accuracy of men's predictions will increase; now men on average predict that some women like being choked, whereas before on average they predicted that few women like being choked.
But in this model, the rate of overestimates has massively increased as a result of porn! In this model, before porn, no men thought all women liked getting choked, but now some men do. And these men might decide to choke women during sex, based on the assumption that of course she likes it, which is presumably what the people concerned about porn misleading men are talking about.
So misleadingness cannot be understood unidimensionally; there are many different men and some may be mislead while others are coming to a better understanding.
Whole concept of porn influencing men view on women preferences is a bit of science-fiction for me. What porn represents is just what men like to watch. It's just a product chosen by consumers. If I eat Big Macs often it doesn't make me think it's healthy or that everyone else finds them tasty. I personally love porn, especially because of my preference for threesomes, but the fact that I watch tons of FFM threesomes never made me think that average woman would like to invite her friend to have sex with her partner. Also making guess about random women is strange, I may not know what are the statistics for ordinary woman but I may be perfectly good in predicting what women I choose like - simply because I match with them based on mutual characteristics.
So all in all final result of this survey kinda confirm my point of view, porn usage is almost meaningless in predicting opposite sex preferences. Mistaking women for being less kinky is based more on social/cultural bias than what we consume as carefully picked up product as porn video.
I think you vastly overestimate how much communication about sexual preferences happens in a conservative marriage scenario - in general my experience in those circles is nobody talks about sex to anyone of the opposite sex (women talk to each other about strategies for dealing with it, not so much about enjoying it, obviously I don't know what the men were talking about), and the clueless men do attempt surprises that the women, who are primed to tolerate rather than enjoy sex, do not appreciate.
Damn, that was a 4️⃣8️⃣ page email
"Cleaning
I am hesitant to publicly go into details about how I cleaned suspicious results out of my data (don’t wanna give people a handbook), but am happy to share this with other researchers privately."
+1 and well done! Savvy researchers already know what you're doing.
Seems like porn either has no effect or helps with men's estimations. That makes sense to me since porn industry tries to attract viewers and show them what they like to see. I think the argument against porn assumes that what men like is different from what women like which I think is wrong. The evolution requires both sexes to be attractive to each other and have similar sexual interests. I have seen my theory matches your data from the big kink survey.
How about the statement "Young boys who are about to start sexual relationships will get the wrong understanding of what women like"? I would love to see a graph about how accurately young boys with no sexual experience (so one or less sexual partner and age as low as the data allows) estimate women's preference by their amount of porn consumption.
If I am interpreting these results correctly:
1. The average man slightly over-predicts how much the average woman is into things.
2. In a randomly-selected sexual encounter between a man and a woman, the average man slightly under-predicts how much that woman is into things.
#1 isn't exactly what's reported, but I'm inclined to say the paid women are more representative of the general population, and the Twitter follower women are probably selected for being more into things (which is plausible for people who follow a sex worker). And #1 is true if you take only the sample of paid women.
Interesting post. I would not have expect as many women to be into some of these things as your survey reports, e.g. choking.
A related question is to what extent does porn make men interested in trying things, believe thst it is appropriate to try things? E.g. in you survey men weren't all that far off on predicting how likely it is that women like anal sex (not very), but I could see porn use making men more interested in trying it or more willing to try to convince their partner to try it as a favor to him.
I also would be interested in how porn impacts prediction of degree of preference. Men might accurately predict that women aren't into something regardless of porn use, but it might cause them to assume something is a thing something women are into, but still an acceptable ask, while women are likely to rank it as unacceptable.
The opening paragraphs summarizing your study could not have been better. Data science is so much more fun with tongue-in-cheek “you were right for the wrong reasons.” Fantastic work and great delivery!
I think you didn't take into account that choking is a recent fashion. Well, maybe not that recent, but at least of the last 10-20 years. Therefore, older men and women would not be as much into it as younger people. Besides, there are serious safety concerns about heavy choking involving carotid occlusion or breath stopping. So, using it to determine how much people are into rough sex is not accurate. Age and risk-taking are important confounds related to choking.
"On average, paid men reported having 9 sexual partners; paid women reported 10.
Both my-following men and my-following women reported 14 sexual partners.
My-following men were 35 years old, while the women were 31.
Paid men were 40 years old, while the women were 41."
Huh.
Well, that and all of these graphs make me feel a lot more normal, so thanks for that. I guess I'm not that bad at sex after all.
I have the impression that porn preference correlates with unrestricted sociosexuality - men who use porn are more likely to want to have casual sex with lots of different women. (E.g. I once did a factor analysis of sexual interests and found "watching porn" to load on the sociosexuality factor.) I think this makes sense from a theoretical perspective; porn isn't really made for romantics, and committed relationship porn sort of seems like an oxymoron. (I mean, you can have more romantic versions of porn, but it will still depict a total stranger...)
Whenever people find that porn correlates with stuff, I always wonder if it is confounded with unrestricted sociosexuality. I would tend to think that it is best to control for unrestricted sociosexuality, though I suspect moral zealots would instead argue that porn causes unrestricted sociosexuality and that therefore one shouldn't control for it.
That's fascinating. I wonder whether relationship context matters?
For example, I remember a one-night stand who was up for sex, but not for receiving oral - that was for relationships only.
I wonder how much of this is confounded by people who seek out novelty. People who consume porn regularly might have a propensity towards seeking out novelty generally, so ADHD sufferers, BPD might be getting selected for.
I admire this work and predict you will get Main Character'd about it somewhere
https://towardsdatascience.com/from-chaos-to-clarity-streamlining-data-cleansing-using-large-language-models-a539fa0b2d90
Figured you might like this