Shaping Sexual Behaviors & Sexual Scripts

Open Access: No.

Abstract

The World Association for Sexual Health has identified sexual satisfaction as an integral component of sexual health. Pornography is one of the most popular categories of digital media and has been theorized as impactful to partnered sexual satisfaction. The objective of the present study is to attempt to replicate Wright et al. (2021) [click the link for the Culture Reframed library entry], who found that adolescents (N = 91) with greater pornography exposure were more likely to engage in sexually dominant behavior, engagement in sexually dominant behavior was associated with lower levels of partnered sexual satisfaction, and the indirect effect of greater pornography exposure on lower sexual satisfaction through sexual dominance was significant. Data for the present replication (N = 59) were from Wave 8 of the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, an ongoing, multi-decade, U.S. nationally representative probability study focused on understanding sexual health and behavior. As in the original study, greater pornography exposure was associated with significantly higher levels of sexually dominant behavior and higher levels of sexually dominant behavior were associated with significantly lower levels of partnered sexual satisfaction. The indirect effect of greater pornography exposure on lower partnered sexual satisfaction through sexual dominance was in the same direction as the original study and overlapped with the 95% confidence interval for the original study’s indirect effect, but was not statistically significant. In sum, findings from Wright et al. (2021) and the present study are suggestive of a mediational linkage between these variables, but larger samples and longitudinal designs are required to rigorously substantiate this hypothesis.

Relevance

“The path coefficient between pornography exposure and sexually dominant behavior was positive and significant…and the path coefficient between sexually dominant behavior and sexual satisfaction was negative and significant.”

As in the previous study (click the link for the Culture Reframed library entry), the “path model positing that exposure to sexually dominant behavior in pornography increases adolescents’ likelihood of engaging in sexually dominant behavior, which in turn decreases their partnered sexual satisfaction, exhibited acceptable fit to the data (i.e., pornography exposure → sexually dominant behavior → sexual satisfaction).”

Citation

Wright, P. J., Herbenick, D., & Tokunaga, R. S. (2026). Adolescents’ Pornography Exposure, Sexually Dominant Behavior, and Partnered Sexual Satisfaction: Replication in a U.S. Probability Sample. Archives of sexual behavior, 55(1), 29–39. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-025-03297-x