Narcissistic people see more pornography, according to a study
Although the term "narcissistic" is used by all kinds of people to refer to some personal characteristics of the people they meet in their day to day, the truth is that this concept is also a category used by psychology scientific That is, it has been statistically linked to some personal characteristics, other personality traits and certain tendencies when behaving.
And, since a few years ago, one of the tendencies that could characterize narcissistic people is the propensity to consume more pornography than the average . This is, at least, what follows from a published research Journal of sex & marital therapy.
The narcissistic sexuality
What sense does it make that the consumption of pornography is significantly greater in narcissistic people? According to the team of researchers who led the study, this is due to the way in which the classic narcissist focuses on himself when it comes to seeking pleasure.
Unlike what happens in other people, who seek reciprocity in pleasant experiences, narcissists are more likely to use others as a simple means to get what they want. According to this interpretation, pornography consumption is perfectly suited to this type of demands ; most situations, performances and even the way in which it is filmed accentuate the instrumental role of the actors that appear on the scene, making them look like artificial beings that move only to satisfy whoever is watching.
That is, this would be a characteristic by which two features that were already known about narcissistic people are expressed: the lack of empathic connections and a sexual motivation more intense than normal in other population groups .
How does the study was realized?
For this research, a group of more than 250 people (63% of whom were women) whose age was between 18 and 61 years was used as a sample.
Each of these people filled out a series of standardized personality tests, which allowed them to evaluate to what extent they were more or less narcissistic. In addition, they answered some questions about their habits when consuming pornography, or they could indicate that they did not consume it.
Interesting results
About 80% of the people who participated said they had seen online pornography voluntarily at some time, and 44% of them said that this was part of their current habits. On average, they consumed about 85 minutes of pornography a week.
But the main finding was that it was found a significant relationship between the narcissistic score obtained in the personality tests and the amount of pornography that was seen .
This means, among other things, that the group of participants who had seen online pornography on occasion included a number of narcissists far greater than the group that had never seen it before.
But, in addition, the correlation between the degree of narcissism also corresponded to the amount of pornography seen, that is, the way in which this activity was incorporated into the day to day of these people. The higher the frequency in which these scenes were seen, the greater the possibility of belonging to the group of people with a higher score in narcissism, and those who at that time continued to see pornography were more narcissistic than those who no longer did. .
Does pornography make us narcissistic?
Apparently, these results could lead us to think that it is the consumption of pornography that makes us score more in this personality trait. But nevertheless, you have to remember that correlation does not equate to causality . From this study we have seen the description of what there is, but we do not know what produces what, in what sense the causality goes.
In other words, it could be that seeing this type of product would make us more narcissistic, but it could also happen, simply, that narcissistic people in principle would consume more this type of content on the Internet. To get an idea of what really happens, we will have to wait for more research on the subject.
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