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Integrating Religiosity and
Pornography Use into the Prediction
of Bystander Efficacy and
Willingness to Prevent
Sexual Assault
John D. Foubert and Andrew Rizzo
Oklahoma State University
is study examined relationships between intrinsic and
extrinsic religiosity, reasons for using Internet pornogra-
phy, frequency of using Internet pornography during the
last year, and the degree to which participants believed
they were both condent in their ecacy and were willing
to intervene to help prevent a sexual assault from occur-
ring. Students volunteered to take an online survey as one
of several options for course credit in a research participa-
tion system in a School of Education at a midwestern pub-
lic university. Men’s extrinsic religiosity was positively cor-
related with their use of Internet pornography and
negatively correlated with willingness to intervene as a
bystander. Men’s intrinsic religiosity was negatively corre-
lated with how many reasons they had for using pornogra-
phy and negatively correlated with their use of pornogra-
phy. Women’s extrinsic religiosity negatively correlated
with their bystander ecacy. Women’s intrinsic religiosity
was negatively correlated with their reasons for using
pornography and their use of pornography. Women’s use of
pornography was negatively correlated with bystander e-
cacy. A regression revealed that three religiosity variables
and two pornography variables predicted 19% of the vari-
ance in women’s bystander ecacy.
Sexual violence is an issue that impacts the lives of
many. Research has consistently shown that one in four
college women have experienced rape or attempted
rape at some point in their lives (Fisher, Cullen, &
Turner, 2006). By the time they turn 18, one in six
males have experienced sexual abuse (Dube, Anda,
Whiteld, et al., 2005). Scholarship in the eld of psy-
chology has identied the willingness and ecacy of
bystanders to intervene in a potential sexual assault sit-
uation as primary targets for programmatic interven-
tions. Research psychologists have also increasingly
noted how pornography use predicts both perpetrator
behavior and bystander involvement (Banyard, 2008).
Meanwhile, theologians have identied religiosity as
contributing toward pro-social behavior and moderat-
ing the eects of harmful inuences, such as pornogra-
phy (Baltazar, Helm, McBride, Hopkins, & Stevens,
2010). Integrating the scholarship in these interrelated
areas is an important step in understanding how to de-
crease sexual violence.
Encouraging bystander intervention is the prevail-
ing prevention approach used on college campuses for
sexual assault education, with a wide variety programs
demonstrating attitude and behavior changes (Katz,
Heisterkamp, & Fleming, 2011; McMahon & Ban-
yard, 2012). Experimental and correlational research
has shown that use of Internet and other types of
pornography is associated with a variety of sexually vio-
lent behavior (Kingston, Malamuth, Fedoro, & Mar-
shall, 2009). Initial research suggests that religiosity
Copyright 2013 by Rosemead School of Psychology
Biola University, 0091-6471/410-730
JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY & THEOLOGY
2013, Vol. 41, No. 3, 242–251
242
JPT41n3_text:JPT_41n3 11/18/13 4:16 PM Page 242
has a protective role in the harms associated with Inter-
net pornography use (Baltazar et al., 2010), yet how re-
ligiosity variables interact to predict bystander inter-
vention is an unexplored issue. Research has found that
the use of pornography, particularly violent pornogra-
phy, suppresses bystander intervention in both male
and female college student populations (Foubert,
Brosi, & Bannon, 2011; Brosi, Foubert, Bannon, &
Yandell, 2011). e purpose of the present study is to
clarify how both internal and external religiosities are
related to pornography use and to explore whether by-
stander ecacy and intent to intervene in a potential
sexual assault situation is predicted by religiosity and
pornography use.
Research using a variety of experimental and corre-
lational methods has shown pornography use to be
harmful to both male and female users (Kingston et al.,
2009; Carroll et al., 2008). A meta-analysis found that
men’s use of pornography is strongly associated with
acceptance of sexual violence (Hald, Malamuth, &
Yuen, 2010). In addition, a comprehensive literature
review of over 50 experimental studies found that men
who frequently use pornography are more likely to
commit rape and other forms of sexual aggression
(Malamuth, Addison, & Koss, 2000).
Traditionally considered a strictly male phenome-
non, the once pronounced gender gap found in
pornography consumption has quickly diminished
(Carroll et al., 2008; Yoder, Virdin, & Amin, 2005).
Some attribute the increased use by women to wide-
spread accessibility and greater anonymity permitted
through the Internet (Fisher & Barak, 2001). Women
who view pornography have been found to blame rape
victims more, assign less responsibility to male perpe-
trators of rape, and to have stronger beliefs that they
should accept sexual victimization (Davis, Norris,
George, Martell, & Heiman, 2006; Norris, Davis,
George, Martell, & Heiman, 2004). Notably, Bridges,
Wosnitzer, Schrrer, Sun, & Liberman (2010) show that
when women in popular mainstream pornographic
movies experience physical aggression by a male, 95%
of the time they respond with either a response of plea-
sure or no response at all. Given that the content of
pornography today reinforces the script that women
do not resist when hit during a sexual encounter
(Bridges et al., 2010), it stands to reason that exposure
to pornography sends the message that women enjoy
physical aggression during sex. If women internalize
these messages that women enjoy violence, it raises a
barrier for potential intervention to help another
woman who is at current risk of sexual assault (McMa-
hon & Banyard, 2012). It also may preclude men from
helping women if they internalize the script that
women enjoy being hit.
Nearly one-half of college women describe pornog-
raphy viewing as an acceptable expression of sexuality,
one-third now use pornography, and one-sixth de-
scribe a level of pornography use that rises to a level of
an addiction (Carroll et al., 2008; Yoder, Virdin, &
Amin, 2005). ese trends are consistent with the ef-
forts of the pornography industry to expand to the fe-
male audience by developing more materials with
women in mind (Dines, 2011).
Research about religious involvement has shown
that it is a protective factor for various maladaptive be-
haviors including criminal activity, drug use, and alco-
holism (Geppert, Bogenschutz, & Miller, 2007). e
protective nature of the relationship between religios-
ity and participation in a range of maladaptive behav-
iors is still under exploration. Meanwhile, moral devel-
opment researchers and theologians have identied
religiosity as contributing toward pro-social behavior
and moderating the eects of harmful inuences, such
as pornography (Baltazar et al., 2010; Hardy & Carlo,
2005).
One way in which Christian theologians suggest
that religiosity mitigates maladaptive behavior is by the
complete reliance upon God rather than the self, as a
behavioral guide. For example, twentieth century theo-
logian Dietrich Bonheoer argued that a) only God
knows the dierence between right and wrong, b) peo-
ple must know God, then learn what is right or wrong
by relying on his grace to learn his will, and c) by relying
completely on God’s grace, people will be able to do
His will (Bonheoer, 1955). us a pathway to good
action is drawn through the grace of God by submit-
ting to His will when God becomes known. In this
case, the path can lead to avoiding pornography use.
Stack, Wasserman, and Kern (2004) indicate that in
the realm of pornography usage, infrequent church at-
tendance is one of the strongest predictors of Internet
pornography use. us, those who attend frequently
are less likely to use pornography. Other signicant
predictors of pornography use include being male, be-
ing in an unhappy marriage, being politically liberal,
having ever committed adultery, having ever used a
prostituted woman, and having a high degree of knowl-
edge of personal computers.
An initial study involving measures of religiosity
and Internet pornography found some relationships
between the two variables (Abell, Steenberg & Boinin,
2006). e researchers recommended that future stud-
ies focus more specically on intrinsic and extrinsic re-
ligiosity and that women’s use should be assessed in
FOUBERT and RIZZO 243
JPT41n3_text:JPT_41n3 11/18/13 4:16 PM Page 243
addition to limiting studies to men at Christian col-
leges as they had.
A more recent study assessed the connections be-
tween men’s and women’s intrinsic and extrinsic reli-
giosity and use of Internet pornography at a conserva-
tive Christian institution (Baltazar et al., 2010). About
half of their participants purposefully visited an Inter-
net porn site in their lifetime; most of whom did so at
home and late at night. Two thirds of men and one in
ve women did so. e most common problem partici-
pants reported from this use was worsening their rela-
tionship with God (43% of men, 20% of women) fol-
lowed by a problematic increase in their own sexual
behavior including masturbation and sexual inter-
course (45 of men, 20% of women).
Baltazar et al. (2010) reported no signicant corre-
lation between intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity and
lifetime visits to an Internet porn site. However, there
was a small, signicant negative correlation for men
who viewed Internet porn for at least an hour in the
last week and religiosity. More specically, men’s recent
Internet pornography use signicantly correlated with
both extrinsic religiosity (r = –.18) and intrinsic reli-
giosity (r = –.13). No such relationships existed for
women’s use of pornography. Analyses in the Baltazar
et al. study were limited to correlation coecients, and
are limited in their generalizability to similar institu-
tions. Given that the decision to use pornography is a
complex decision, most research involving pornogra-
phy now involves statistical models that more closely
match that complexity (Kingston et al., 2009; Hald,
Malamuth, & Yuen, 2010). e present study sought
to understand the complex relationship among these
and other variables through both bivariate and more
complex regression methods.
Specically, we sought to determine whether men’s
and women’s religiosity, Internet pornography use, and
motivation to use pornography would predict their by-
stander ecacy and willingness to intervene in a po-
tential rape situation. We hypothesized that Internet
pornography use would negatively correlate with reli-
giosity for both men and women. Previous research at a
Christian institution found small negative correlations
for men and no correlations for women (Baltazar et al.,
2010). With our population from a secular institution,
we anticipated a greater range of religious belief among
participants and predicted signicant negative correla-
tions given substantially more opportunities for stu-
dents to choose to use pornography.
We also hypothesized that blocks of religiosity and
pornography variables would contribute unique vari-
ance in predicting bystander willingness and ecacy
for participants in our study. We predicted these rela-
tionships based on prior research that pornography
use leads to lower levels of bystander intervention
(Brosi, Foubert, Bannon & Yandell, 2011; Foubert,
Brosi, & Bannon, 2011) and related research that reli-
giosity motivates pro-social behavior (Hardy & Carlo,
2005). However, the specic relationship between reli-
giosity, pornography, and bystander intervention is un-
known. us, we sought to address this gap in the
literature.
Aer conducting some initial analyses to determine
the factor structure of a published scale we used to
measure motivation to use pornography, we computed
bivariate correlations and four regressions. Two regres-
sions were computed for men and two for women. In
each regression, religious orthodoxy, extrinsic religios-
ity, and intrinsic religiosity were entered as a block into
the regression followed by a block consisting of the fac-
tor analyzed scale of motivation to use pornography
and the participant’s total annual Internet pornogra-
phy use score. Outcome variables for the regressions
were either bystander ecacy or bystander willingness
to intervene in a sexual assault situation.
Method
Participants
Participants were undergraduate and graduate stu-
dents at a large midwestern public university. Of an
original 262 surveys collected, 8 were discarded as the
participants did not provide any data and 4 surveys
were removed because they answered the same ques-
tion two opposite ways during our survey. e remain-
ing sample of participants consisted of 74 (30%) male
and 173 (70%) female participants. e sample in-
cluded 15 (6%) rst-year students, 32 (13%) sopho-
more students, 77 (31%) junior students, 57 (23%)
senior students, and 69 (28%) graduate students. Par-
ticipants reported their race as 185 (75%) White, 25
(10%) African American, 20 (8%) Native American, 7
(3%) Hispanic/Latino, and 5 (2%) Asian/Asian Amer-
ican. Participants’ mean age was 23.6 (SD = 6.14), and
ages ranged from 18 to 53.
Materials
Participants completed the Religious Orientation
Scale, the Bystander Ecacy Scale, the Bystander Will-
ingness to Help Scale, the Exposure to Internet
Pornography uestionnaire, the Reasons for Consum-
ing Internet Pornography Scale, and a brief demo-
graphic questionnaire. e details of each instrument
are provided in the following paragraphs.
244 RELIGIOSITY, PORNOGRAPHY AND BYSTANDERS
JPT41n3_text:JPT_41n3 11/18/13 4:16 PM Page 244
Religious Orientation Scale. e religious orienta-
tion scale contained three subscales: Intrinsic religios-
ity, extrinsic religiosity, and doctrinal orthodoxy (All-
port & Ross, 1967; Burris, 1999a; Burris, 1999b).
Extrinsic orientation is a measure of utilitarian motives
for religious behavior, such as attending church to
achieve social standing in the community and to pray
in order to be happy. An intrinsic orientation is charac-
terized by living out one’s religion by attending church,
reading about one’s faith, joining Bible study groups,
and keeping ones religious beliefs central to a whole ap-
proach to life. Doctrinal orthodoxy measures the de-
gree to which participants subscribe to specic Chris-
tian beliefs like God created the universe, that one
must accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior to be saved
from sin, and the belief that Jesus is the Messiah. Each
scale contains between nine to 12 items and is mea-
sured on a 5-point Likert scale. Alpha reliability studies
of the ROS Intrinsic scale have been reported in the
mid .80s; the extrinsic scale in the .70s. Test-retest reli-
ability has been reported at .84 for Intrinsic, and .78 for
Extrinsic. Some evidence is reported for the validity of
the intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity scale through cor-
relations with measures of related constructs.
Bystander Ecacy Scale. Perceived ability to inter-
vene as a bystander was measured by the bystander e-
cacy scale, developed by Banyard, Plante, and Moyni-
han (2005). is measure asks participants to indicate
whether they believe that they could do each of 18 by-
stander behaviors and if so denote their condence in
performing this bystander behavior. Participants rate
items on a scale of 1 to 100 percent, indicating their
percent condence that they believe that they know
how to intervene in the scenario described. Strong cri-
terion and construct validity data are reported by Ban-
yard (2008). e alpha in this study was .91.
Bystander Willingness to Help Scale. e Will-
ingness to Help Scale was developed by Banyard,
Plante, and Moynihan (2005) and measures partici-
pants’ degree of likelihood of engaging in 12 bystander
behaviors on a 7-point scale, ranging from not at all
willing to intervene to very willing to intervene. Items
came from research literature and from discussions
with advocates and professionals working in the eld of
sexual violence. Strong criterion and construct validity
are reported by Banyard (2008). An alpha of .85 was
found in the present study.
Exposure to Internet Pornography Question-
naire. Respondents’ use of Internet pornography was
measured with the Frable, Johnson, and Kellman’s
(1997) Exposure to Internet Pornography uestion-
naire (EIPQ). Respondents indicated how many times
in the past year they had been exposed to each of 22
dierent items of Internet pornography. Responses
were then recoded to a seven-point ordinal scale (1 =
zero times; 2 = one to two times; 3 = three to ve
times; 4 = six to ten times; 5 = eleven to y times; 6 =
y-one to one hundred times; 7 = more than 100
times). A total Internet pornography consumption
score was calculated by summing the z-score transfor-
mations. An alpha of .90 was found in the present
study. e design of the EIPQ included a division of
items into hard-core and so-core pornographic items.
An example of a so-core item on this scale is: “Viewed
pictures featuring socore material, such as lingerie or
swimsuits?” A hardcore item is: “Seen pictures depict-
ing heterosexual oral-genital intercourse?”
Reasons for Consuming Internet Pornography
Scale (RCIP). Respondents’ reasons for consuming In-
ternet pornography was measured with Frable, John-
son, & Kellman’s (1997) Reasons for Consuming In-
ternet Pornography Scale. Respondents endorsed 17
items on a ve-point scale from strongly agree to
strongly disagree. Six subscales were created by sum-
ming the z-score transformations of these items. Sub-
scales included “to make sex more interesting,” “to re-
lieve sexual tension,” “to turn on a sexual partner,” “for
sexual thrills,” “to enjoy a social event,” and “to learn
about sex.” An alpha of .95 was found in the present
study.
A factor analysis was computed in the present study
for the RCIP using principal axis factoring. A single fac-
tor with an eigenvalue of 4.26 resulted, explaining 71%
of the variance in motivation to use pornography. All
other eigenvalues were .67 or lower. Bartlett’s Test of
Sphericity was computed with a Chi-square of 801.26
and 15 degrees of freedom (p< .000). A Kaiser-Meyer-
Olkin Measure of sampling adequacy yielded a value of
.881. All six subscales loaded on the extracted factor
(1 = .93, 2 = .75, 3 = .79, 4 = .89, 5 = .67, 6 = .80).
An item analysis was then computed for the RCIP
scale. e internal consistency of the scale as measured
by Cronbach’s alpha was .92. Item to total correlations
ranged from .64 to .88. Alpha would remain at .92 or
would drop if any subscale was removed from the over-
all scale, therefore all subscales were maintained for fu-
ture analyses.
Missing Data. Schafer and Graham (2002) note
that ipsative mean imputation (IMI) is a satisfactory
FOUBERT and RIZZO 245
JPT41n3_text:JPT_41n3 11/18/13 4:16 PM Page 245
method for treating missing data. IMI can be used in
situations where there are multiple items that comprise
a one-dimensional scale. If a respondent has partial
missing data for such a scale, then the missing items
can be replaced by the mean of the respondent’s non-
missing items. In this study a respondent was a candi-
date for IMI if the missing items accounted for less
than 10% of the items on a given scale.
Procedure
Participants were recruited through a human sub-
jects pool of students who were taking courses in the
College of Education during the Spring, Summer, and
Fall 2011 semesters. A total of 262 surveys were col-
lected through volunteers who signed up for course
credit. e study was set up in a survey format using the
online site, Survey Monkey. is company employs
multiple layers of security to ensure data privacy and se-
curity, including daily independent audits of security
measures, rewall, and disk redundancy. e Survey
Monkey account was password protected as an addi-
tional protection; only one researcher had access to the
account. Data were deleted o of the remote server
aer being downloaded. No personally identifying in-
formation was requested. Once data collection was
complete, we downloaded responses onto a password-
protected computer.
Results
Descriptive Statistics
Internet pornography use was reported by 76% of
men in the last year, 61% used hardcore Internet
pornography in the last year, with 56% using hardcore
Internet pornography in the last month. During the
last year, 65% of the women viewed Internet pornogra-
phy, 42% viewed hardcore Internet pornography, with
21% viewing hardcore Internet pornography during
the last month.
Correlations
Correlation coecients were computed for each
variable. Given the gendered nature of so many of the
variables in our study, we focus our comments on cor-
relation results by gender (See Tables 1 and 2). Not
surprisingly, there were moderate to high correlations
between intrinsic religiosity and doctrinal orthodoxy,
bystander ecacy and willingness, and reasons to use
pornography and frequency of pornography use. ese
relationships existed for both men and women.
e more reasons men had to use pornography the
more likely they were to report extrinsic religiosity (r=
.26, p< .05), yet these variables were uncorrelated for
women. A marginally signicant negative correlation
existed between men’s intrinsic religiosity and their
reasons for using pornography (r= –.23, p= .06). Men
also had a willingness to intervene as a bystander that
was negatively correlated with extrinsic religiosity (r=
–.25, p< .05), and a marginally signicant negative
correlation between use of Internet pornography and
intrinsic religiosity (r= –.22, p= .06).
Women’s intrinsic religiosity was negatively corre-
lated with their motivation to use pornography (r=
–.19, p< .05). In addition, women’s actual use of Inter-
net pornography had a signicant negative correlation
with their intrinsic religiosity (r= –.30, p< .05).
Women’s use of pornography was also negatively corre-
lated with bystander ecacy (r= –.18, p< .05), as was
extrinsic religiosity (r= –.15, p < .05). Bystander e-
cacy was also negatively correlated with women’s moti-
vation to use pornography (r = –.26, p= <.05).
246 RELIGIOSITY, PORNOGRAPHY AND BYSTANDERS
TABLE 1
Correlations Among Variables for Women
Scales 1234567
1. Reasons 1 –.26* –.10*.16 –.19* –.18*.54*
2. Ecacy 1 .56* –.10 –.02*–.09*–.18*
3. Willingness 1 –.05 .13*.13*–.07*
4. Extrinsic 1 .03*.01*–.05*
5. Intrinsic 1 .81* –.29*
6. Orthodoxy 1 –.17*
7. Pornography 1
* = signicant at the .05 level.
JPT41n3_text:JPT_41n3 11/18/13 4:16 PM Page 246
Regressions
Separate regressions were computed for men and
women given the gender dierences in prior research
on pornography use (Baltaza et al., 2010; Foubert,
Brosi, & Bannon, 2011; Brosi et al., 2011). A hierarchi-
cal regression procedure was computed with women’s
bystander ecacy as the dependent variable. e rst
block of variables entered into the regression equation
consisting of religious orthodoxy, extrinsic religiosity,
and intrinsic religiosity. e second block of variables
included motivation to use pornography and annual
Internet pornography use. e rst block yielded an R
of .372, and an R2of .14, F(3, 107) = 5.71, p< .001.
e second block added signicant predictive value to
the regression equation, F(5, 105) = 5.02, p< .000,
yielding an overall Rof .439, and an R2of .19. us, re-
ligiosity and pornography variables accounted for 19%
of the variance in bystander ecacy for women.
Hierarchical regressions were computed using the
same blocks of variables for women’s bystander willing-
ness to intervene and for men’s bystander ecacy and
men’s bystander willingness to intervene. ese three
regressions did not yield signicant ndings.
Finally, a t-test showed that bystander ecacy
scores for men (M= 79.5, SD = 20.9) and women
(M= 81.0, SD = 14.5) were statistically equivalent.
Yet, the variability in scores was vastly dierent. In ad-
dition to the dierent standard deviations, the stan-
dard error of the mean was 1.1 for women, for men it
was 2.4. Levine’s Test for equality of variances was also
signicant F(1, 244) = 8.31, p< .01. ese ndings
point to a lack of uniformity among men’s sense of
whether they believe they could be eective in inter-
vening to prevent sexual assault. Indeed, many men re-
port strong ecacy; others report hardly any ecacy to
intervene at all.
Discussion
Our hypothesis that negative correlations would ex-
ist between Internet pornography use and religiosity
for both men and women was conrmed. In both cases,
a signicant negative correlation between intrinsic reli-
giosity and Internet pornography use emerged. is
nding conrms prior research on men and extends the
nding to women (Baltazar et al., 2010).
When examining other correlations, representing
between 3 and 9% of the variance, what stands out
most is their pattern rather than any individual rela-
FOUBERT and RIZZO 247
TABLE 2
Correlations Among Variables for Men
Scales 1234567
1. Reasons 1 .01 –.13*.26* –.23+–.10*.44*
2. Ecacy 1 .66* .05*.12+.10*.02*
3. Willingness 1 –.25* –.05+–.01*.18*
4. Extrinsic 1 .04+.03*–.07*
5. Intrinsic 1 .82* –.22+
6. Orthodoxy 1 –.09*
7. Pornography 1
* = signicant at the .05 level.
+= p=.06
TABLE 3
Hierarchical Multiple Regression Analysis Predicting
Bystander Ecacy for Women
β
Variable Model 1 Model 2
Orthodoxy –.43** –.38**
Extrinsic –.29** –.27**
Intrinsic .51** .39**
Reasons –.13**
Porn Use –.15**
R.372 .439
R2.138 .193
F5.71*** 5.02***
ΔR2.055
* = signicant at the .05 level.
** = signicant at the .01 level.
*** = signicant at the .001 level.
JPT41n3_text:JPT_41n3 11/18/13 4:16 PM Page 247
tionship. When one examines signicant correlations
for men, one can see that their extrinsic religiosity is as-
sociated with higher rates of pornography use and less
willingness to intervene to prevent sexual assault. On
the other hand, intrinsic religiosity was associated with
fewer reasons for using pornography and less frequent
use of Internet pornography. One can rightfully con-
clude from these ndings that men who go to church in
the hopes of achieving social standing or making them-
selves happy are also more likely to be self-centered in
their use of pornography, and are more likely to avoid
helping someone who might be sexually assaulted. By
contrast, men who attend church to live out their faith,
read the Bible, and keep their religious beliefs central to
their lives cite fewer reasons to view pornography and
use it less frequently.
We found that women’s use of pornography was as-
sociated with a lower sense of ecacy to intervene in a
sexual assault situation. In addition, lower ecacy was
correlated with higher extrinsic religiosity. Lower e-
cacy was also correlated with more reasons to consume
Internet pornography. Higher intrinsic religiosity was
associated with both fewer reasons to use pornography
and less use of pornography. It seems from women’s re-
sults that, as in the case of men, intrinsic religiosity has
a protective eect for reasons to use pornography and
frequency of its use. While pornography use was asso-
ciated with men’s willingness to intervene to prevent
rape, with women, the eect was on how eective they
thought they would be in various situations where a
rape might occur. us, pornography seemed to under-
mine women’s condence that they could intervene in
the rst place. Furthermore, the deleterious eects of
an extrinsic religious orientation were uncovered here
as well, given its relationship with lower ecacy to in-
tervene to help prevent a sexual assault.
We found partial support for our hypothesis that
blocks of religiosity and pornography variables would
predict bystander intervention. Using a multiple re-
gression, our study found that religiosity and pornog-
raphy use predicted bystander ecacy for women.
Specically, a block of religiosity measures and a block
of pornography measures entered into a regression pre-
dicted 19% of the variance in how eective women be-
lieve they would be in intervening to help prevent a
sexual assault. However, when regressions were com-
puted to determine whether these blocks of variables
predict whether women are willing to intervene or
whether the same combinations predict the outcome
variables for men, the relationships were not signi-
cant. Given the very high variability in men’s bystander
ecacy scores, demonstrated by a signicant Levine’s
test, stronger inuences beyond the variables measured
in this study are likely aecting men’s bystander e-
cacy. Some men seem extremely prepared to intervene;
others indicate low ecacy. Exploring this relationship
in future research is a promising area for generating
new knowledge. For example, a study might look into
the qualitative dierences between men who feel they
are eective at intervening and those who do not.
When examining bivariate correlations, results sug-
gest that intrinsic religiosity has a small but signicant
weakening eect on the impulse to use pornography,
while extrinsic religiosity is associated with slightly
greater use for both men and women. With women, re-
sults suggest that there is something about their use of
pornography and how that intersects with their reli-
giosity that may inhibit their ability to believe that they
know what to do to intervene in a sexual assault situa-
tion more so than their peers. is eect could be be-
cause the pornography they have viewed so oen com-
bines both sex and aggression where women react with
pleasure or not at all (Bridges et al., 2010). Women’s
condence in their ability to identify what is rape and
whether they could intervene is likely aected by re-
peated exposure to Internet pornography. Such expo-
sure appears to alter women’s understanding of how
to intervene in situations that could turn into rape—
perhaps simply because of the blurred boundary result-
ing from the inclusion of violence in sexual acts they
view. Future research should clarify the precise role
that watching pornography has on these women and
should explore how religiosity might mitigate the im-
pact on bystander ecacy. One might also consider
how altruism, a construct oen related to religiosity
and spirituality, intersects with bystander ecacy and
pornography.
On a bivariate level, it is noteworthy that men who
conceptualize religion as a means of achieving social
status and using it to make them happy are also less
willing to intervene to prevent a sexual assault. When
studying religiosity variables on a more complex level
through regression, we note that the lack of predictive
signicance of blocks of religiosity and pornography
use variables for men’s willingness, and particularly
their bystander ecacy may have been due to the ex-
tremely wide variability in men’s bystander ecacy
scores. ere are clearly some men who are condent in
their eectiveness to intervene to prevent rape and
some who are not. In this study, their religiosity, moti-
vation and frequency of use of Internet pornography
did not appear related to their bystander ecacy.
Our results had key dierences when compared to a
recent study about religiosity and Internet pornogra-
248 RELIGIOSITY, PORNOGRAPHY AND BYSTANDERS
JPT41n3_text:JPT_41n3 11/18/13 4:16 PM Page 248
phy use among students at a conservative Christian
campus (Baltazar et al., 2010). For men, both studies
found small negative correlations between intrinsic re-
ligiosity and a measure of recent frequency of pornog-
raphy use. However, Baltazar et al. also found pornog-
raphy use to have a weak, negative correlation with
men’s extrinsic religiosity; the present study found no
such relationship. For women, the present study found
that use of Internet pornography was negatively corre-
lated with their intrinsic religiosity. No such relation-
ship was found with the participants in Baltazar et al.’s
(2010) study. It appears that institution type has an im-
portant impact on the variables we measured.
A compelling question for future research would be
to isolate the environmental inuences of a conserva-
tive Christian campus relative to a public institution
and the specic inuential religious beliefs of students
at either location in order to determine what variables
have the greatest impact on pornography use, by-
stander intervention, and a variety of other outcomes.
A critical environmental dierence between institu-
tions is the use of pornography lters on every com-
puter on campus and concurrent policies and social
mores that strongly discourage pornography use at the
institution studied by Baltazar et al. (2010). In the
present study, students can access pornography as they
see t unencumbered by policies against its viewing
and in a postmodern university culture (Arnold, 2010;
Bloland, 2005) that does not discourage its use and in
many cases encourages its use as socially acceptable
(Brickell, 2012). In addition, there may have been un-
der reporting of pornography use in the Baltazar et al.
(2010) study given that use was a code of conduct vio-
lation on that campus.
Our study began to uncover the specics of religios-
ity variables that are associated with pornography use
and its related behaviors, such as intervening to help
someone who might be sexually assaulted. Given that
the variance we accounted for was under 10%, there are
clearly other variables that account for why people use
pornography. As of this writing there is scant literature
on what motivates people to use pornography, aside
from a very limited number of studies that have begun
to investigate the reasons people use pornography
(Frable, Johnson, & Kellman, 1997; Stack, Wasserman,
& Kern, 2004). Initial research ndings suggest that
people who use pornography likely attend church less
frequently, are male, are liberal, and have committed
adultery (Stack, Wasserman, & Kern, 2004). However,
one would not have to work too hard to discover many
exceptions to these generalizations. Research on what
results from the use of pornography is plentiful and im-
portant (Davis et al., 2006; Hald, Malamuth, & Yuen,
2010; Kingston et al., 2009). If the harms of pornogra-
phy are to be fully understood and combatted on col-
lege campuses, in society, and in the Church, more re-
search is needed to better understand why both men
and women are using pornography so that educators,
clinicians, clergy, and researchers can do a better job of
addressing its root causes.
Limitations
is study was limited by the nature of the sample
we studied. Participants volunteered to participate in
an online survey through a research participation sys-
tem for course credit. All participants were taking un-
dergraduate or graduate classes in a College of Educa-
tion. ough students took many electives outside of
the College of Education, the entire university popula-
tion was not eligible for participation. Given that we
used participants from a College of Education subject
pool, it is not surprising that we had more women than
men in our study. us, our design had more power for
women than it did for men. is limitation should be
taken into consideration. e study was also limited
in that self-report measures were used. Participants
may not have wished to reveal such personal informa-
tion as their religious beliefs and use of pornography
through an online computer system, despite assurances
of anonymity.
e study is limited given that 75% of participants
were Caucasian, caution should be exercised in general-
izing these results to a population that is not White.
e population for this study is also highly educated,
with more than half having three or more years of
higher education; thus it has limited generalizability to
those with only a high school education or less. One
must also keep in mind the use of Ipsative Mean Impu-
tation for missing data for our surveys.
Future Research
Future research that examines pornography use on
Christian college campuses should take extra measures
to insure that participant responses are both conden-
tial and anonymous. One way to do this would be to
have a researcher from outside the institution collect
the data with assurances from inside the institution to
its students that data will not be used only by the re-
searcher and will not be available to the university.
Now that intrinsic and extrinsic religiosities and its
relationship to use of pornography has been studied at
a religious and secular institution separately, it would
be a worthwhile for future research to study these vari-
ables in the same study including populations from
FOUBERT and RIZZO 249
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Christian colleges and secular institutions. Such a
sample would allow for direct comparisons between
these populations, and would allow researchers to tease
out the environmental impact of attending a Christian
institution from the mere fact of having a Christian
identity and attending either a religious or secular
institution.
We also suggest that future research explore the
tremendous variability we found in men’s bystander ef-
cacy scores. is variability may have impeded our ef-
forts to determine how religiosity relates to men’s by-
stander ecacy. At a minimum, the wide range in
scores calls for further exploration.
Conclusion
Ultimately we found that a pattern of bivariate cor-
relations emerged such that extrinsic religiosity is oen
associated with more Internet pornography use and
that intrinsic religiosity is associated with less use. is
pattern points to the critical nature of not just being in-
volved in religious activity but why one is religiously
engaged. We also found that both religiosity and
pornography use are unique predictors of bystander ef-
cacy in women. at they were not for men may well
be due to such high levels of pornography use among
men. It is clear that exploring the role of religiosity in
pornography use and in the related area of sexual vio-
lence is a promising area for further investigation.
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Author Information
FOUBERT, JOHN D. Ph.D. Address: Oklahoma State University,
314 Willard Hall, Stillwater, OK, 74078. Title: Associate Professor
of Higher Education and Student Aairs. Degrees: Ph.D. College
Student Personnel Administration, University of Maryland; M.A.
(Psychology) University of Richmond; B.A. (Psychology & Sociol-
ogy) e College of William and Mary. Specializations: sexual vio-
lence prevention, harms of pornography, spiritual development of
college students.
RIZZO, ANDREW J. Institutional Aliation: Emory University.
Address: 1525 Clion Rd., Atlanta, GA 30324. Title : Health Pro -
motion Specialist for the Respect Program. Degrees: M.S. (Higher
Education and Student Aairs) Oklahoma State University; B.A.
(Psychology) University of Pennsylvania. Specializations: Sexual be-
havior, college student development, interpersonal relationships.
FOUBERT and RIZZO 251
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