Background and Objectives

Addictive behaviors are gaining recognition in the clinical community, leading to more attention for the effects of problematic porn use. As many addictive behaviors are characterized by automatically activated approach-tendencies for disorder-relevant stimuli, we tested whether such tendencies are also present for erotic images and whether these are related to problematic porn use.

Methods

Measuring approach-bias for erotic photographs, sixty-two healthy heterosexual and bisexual men completed both a relevant-feature and an irrelevant-feature approach-avoidance task (AAT). Half of participants operated a joystick as response device, the other half a keyboard. We recorded participants’ number of weekly porn-viewing sessions and symptoms of problematic porn use.

Results

The irrelevant-feature AAT produced unreliable results and was not analyzed further. In the relevant-feature AAT, participants had an overall approach-bias towards erotic stimuli. Porn use frequency, but not problematic porn use, was associated with with greater erotic approach-bias. This relationship was stronger when measured with a joystick than with a keyboard.

Limitations

Our design did not allow to test the causal direction of the relationship between porn use and approach-bias, and our results cannot be generalized to women, non-heterosexual men, and clinical populations.

Conclusions

Similar to other addictive behaviors and substances, we found a positive relation between porn use and approach-bias. Future studies using the relevant-feature AAT will likely benefit from using the joystick rather than the keyboard.

中文翻译：

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乐在其中？与色情使用相关的色情方法偏见，不是问题

背景和目标

上瘾的行为在临床上得到了认可，从而引起了人们对有问题的色情使用的影响的更多关注。由于许多成瘾行为的特征在于与疾病相关的刺激会自动激活趋近倾向，因此我们测试了色情图片是否也存在这种倾向，以及这些倾向是否与色情使用问题有关。

方法

通过测量色情照片的接近偏向，六十二名健康的异性恋和双性恋男性完成了一项与特征相关的任务和一项与特征无关的避免回避任务（AAT）。一半的参与者操纵操纵杆作为响应设备，另一半则操纵键盘。我们记录了参与者每周观看色情内容的次数以及色情使用问题的症状。

结果

与功能无关的AAT产生的结果不可靠，因此不作进一步分析。在具有相关特征的AAT中，参与者对色情刺激有总体的偏见。色情使用频率较高但色情方式偏见却与色情使用频率有关，但不是有问题的色情使用。使用操纵杆进行测量时，该关系比使用键盘进行测量时更强。

局限性

我们的设计不允许测试色情使用和接近方式之间关系的因果关系，并且我们的结果不能推广到女性，非异性恋男性和临床人群。

结论

与其他成瘾行为和物质类似，我们发现色情使用与偏向行为之间存在正相关关系。将来使用相关功能AAT进行的研究可能会受益于使用操纵杆而不是键盘。