Assumptions regarding the harmful effects of exposure to virtual child pornography are tested in a laboratory experiment. Based on a lexical decision-making task, participants exposed to sexually explicit depictions of females who appear to be minors (“barely legal” pornography) were faster to recognize sexual words after being primed with neutral depictions of girls compared to participants who were preexposed to adult pornography. Trend analysis showed that participants took longer to recognize sexual words after exposure to neutral depictions of underage females the older the models they saw in the exposure condition. Contrary to predictions, male and female participants exposed to barely legal pornography estimated lower rather than higher prevalence and popularity of barely legal depictions than those in other conditions. Implications of evidence of a child-sex cognitive schema following exposure to barely legal pornography and explanations for the failure to support predictions concerning Web-based barely legal pornography are discussed.
Allen, M., D'Alessio, D., & Brezgel, K. (1995). A meta-analysis summarizing the effects of pornography II. Human Communication Research, 22, 258-283.
2.
Allen, M., Emmers, T., Gebhardt, L., & Giery, M.A. (1995). Exposure to pornography and acceptance of rape myths. Journal of Communication, 45(1), 5-25.
3.
Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002).
4.
Bandura, A. (1965). Influence of model's reinforcement contingencies on the acquisition of imitative responses. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1, 589-595.
5.
Bandura, A. (1971). Social learning theory. New York: General Learning Press.
6.
Bandura, A. (1973). Aggression: A social learning analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
7.
Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
8.
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
9.
Bandura, A. (1994). A social cognitive theory of mass communication . In J. Bryant & D. Zillmann (Eds.), Media effects (pp. 61-90). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
10.
Bem, S.L. (1983). Gender schema theory and its implications for child development: Raising genderaschematic children in a gender-schematic society. Signs, 8, 598-616.
11.
Berkowitz, L. (1984). Some effects of thoughts on anti- and prosocial influences of media events: A cognitive-neoassociation analysis. Psychological Bulletin,95, 410-427.
12.
Berkowitz, L. (1993). Aggression: Its causes, consequences, and control . New York: McGraw-Hill.
13.
Busselle, R.W. (2001). Television exposure, perceived realism, and exemplar accessibility in the social judgment process. MediaPsychology , 3, 43-67.
14.
Busselle, R.W., & Shrum, L.J. (2000). Media exposure and exemplar accessibility. Unpublished manuscript.
15.
Cedrus Corporation. (1999). SuperLab Pro (Version 2.0) [Computer software]. San Pedro, CA: Author.
16.
Check, J.V.P. (1984). The effects of violent and nonviolent pornography (Contract No. 955V, 19200-3-0899). Ottawa, Canada: Canadian Department of Justice.
Crick, N.R., & Dodge, K.A. (1994). A review and reformulation of social information processing mechanisms in children's adjustment. Psychological Bulletin,115, 74-101.
19.
Dodge, K.A. (1986). A social information processing model of social competence in children. In M. Perlmutter (Ed.), The Minnesota symposium on child psychology (pp. 77-125). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
20.
Donnerstein, E., Linz, D., & Penrod, S. (1987). The question of pornography: Research findings and policy implications. New York: Free Press.
21.
Fazio, R.H. (1990). A practical guide to the use of response latency in social psychological research. In C. Hendrick & M. S. Clark (Eds.), Research methods in personality and social psychology (pp. 74-97). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
22.
Graham, S., & Hudley, C. (1994). Attributions of aggressive and nonagressive African-American male early adolescents: A study of construct accessibility. Developmental Psychology, 30, 365-373.
23.
Gunter, B. (2002). Media sex: What are the issues?Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
24.
Huesmann, L.R. (1988). An information processing model for the development of aggression. Aggressive Behavior, 14, 13-24.
25.
Huesmann, L.R. (1998). The role of social information processing and cognitive schema in the acquisition and maintenance of habitual aggressive behavior. In R. G. Geen & E. Donnerstein (Eds.), Human aggression: Theories, research, and implications for social policy (pp. 73-109). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
26.
Huesmann, L.R., Moise, J., & Podolski, C.P. (1997). The effects of media violence on the development of antisocial behavior. In D. Stoff, J. Breiling, & J. Masser (Eds.), Handbook of antisocial behavior (pp. 181-193). New York: John Wiley.
27.
Jo, E., & Berkowitz, L. (1994). A priming effect analysis of media influences: An update. In J. Bryant & D. Zillmann (Eds.), Media effects (pp. 43-60). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
28.
Josephson, W.L. (1987). Television violence and children's aggression: Testing and priming, social script, and disinhibition predictions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 882-890.
Linz, D., Adams, S., & Donnerstein, E. (1989). Physiological desensitization and judgments about female victims of violence. Human Communication Research, 15, 509-522.
31.
Linz, D., Donnerstein, E., & Penrod, S. (1988). Long-term exposure to violent and sexually degrading depictions of women. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 55, 758-768.
32.
Linz, D., & Malamuth, N. (1993). Communication concepts 5: Pornography. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
33.
Linz, D.G., Donnerstein, E., & Penrod, S. (1984). The effects of multiple exposures to filmed violence against women. Journal of Communication, 34(3), 130-147.
34.
Malamuth, N.M., Haber, S., & Feshbach, S. (1980). Testing hypotheses regarding rape: Exposure to sexual violence, sex differences, and the “normality” of results . Journal of Research in Personality, 14, 121-137.
35.
Manis, M., Shedler, J., Jonides, J., & Nelson, T.E. (1993). Availability heuristic in judgments of set size and frequency occurrence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 448-457.
36.
Meyer, D.E., & Schvaneveldt, R.W. (1971). Facilitation in recognizing pairs of words. Journal of ExperimentalPsychology, 90, 227-234.
37.
Mullin, C.R., & Linz, D. (1995). Desensitization and resensitization to violence against women: Effects of exposure to sexually violent films on judgments of domestic violence victims. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 449-459.
38.
Neely, J.H. (1976). Semantic priming and retrieval from lexical memory: Evidence for facilitatory and inhibitory processes. Memory and Cognition, 4, 648-654.
39.
Neely, J.H. (1977). Semantic priming and retrieval from lexical memory: Roles of inhibitionless spreading, spreading activation and limited-capacity attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 106, 225-254.
40.
O'Guinn, T.C., & Shrum, L.J. (1997). The role of television in the construction of consumer reality. Journal of Consumer Research, 23, 278-294.
41.
Shrum, L.J. (1996). Psychological processes underlying cultivation effects: Further tests of construct accessibility. Human Communication Research, 22, 482-509.
42.
Shrum, L.J. (2002). Media consumption and effects of social reality: Effects and underlying processes. In J. Bryant & D. Zillmann (Eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 69-95). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
43.
Singh, D., & Young, R. (1995). Body weight, waist-to-hip ratio, breasts and hips: Role in judgments of female attractiveness and desirability in relationships . Ethology and Sociobiology, 16, 483-507.
44.
Slater, M.D., Rouner, D., Beauvais, F., Murphy, K., Domenech-Rodriquez, M., & Van Leuven, J. (1996). Adolescent exceptions of underage drinkers in TV beer ads. Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education, 42, 43-56.
45.
Smith, S.L., & Donnerstein, E. (1998). Harmful effects of exposure to media violence: Learning of aggression, emotional desensitization, and fear. In R. G. Geen & E. Donnerstein (Eds.), Human aggression: Theories, research, and implications for social policy (pp. 167-202). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
46.
Stevens, J.P. (2002). Applied multivariate statistics for the social sciences (4th ed.). Mahwah, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum.
47.
Thornhill, R., & Palmer, C.T. (2000). A natural history of rape: Biological bases of sexual coercion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
48.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5, 207-232.
49.
Zillmann, D. (1984). Victimization of women through pornography. Proposal to theNational Science Foundation, Bloomington, IN.
