Self-identification as a pornography addict: examining the roles of pornography use, religiousness, and moral incongruence

Abstract At present, the scientific community has not reached a consensus regarding whether or not people may be become addicted to or compulsive in use of pornography. Even so, a substantial number of people report feeling that their use of pornography is dysregulated or out of control. Whereas prior works considered self-reported feelings of addiction via indirect scales or dimensional measures, the present work examined what might lead someone to specifically identify as a pornography addict. Consistent with prior research, pre-registered hypotheses predicted that religiousness, moral disapproval, and average daily pornography use would emerge as consistent predictors of self-identification as a pornography addict. Four samples, involving adult pornography users (Sample 1, N = 829, Mage = 33.3; SD = 9.4; Sample 2, N = 424, Mage = 33.6; SD = 9.1; Sample 4, N = 736, Mage = 48.0; SD = 15.8) and undergraduates (Sample 3, N = 231, Mage = 19.3; SD = 1.8), were collected. Across all three samples, male gender, moral incongruence, and average daily pornography use consistently emerged as predictors of self-identification as a pornography addict. In contrast to prior literature indicating that moral incongruence and religiousness are the best predictors of self-reported feelings of addiction (measured dimensionally), results from all four samples indicated that male gender and average daily pornography use were the most strongly associated with self-identification as a pornography addict, although moral incongruence consistently emerged as a robust and unique predictors of such self-identification.