Although the term “narcissist” is used by all kinds of people to refer to some personal characteristics of the people they encounter in their daily lives, the truth is that this concept is also a category used by scientific psychology. That is, it has been statistically linked to some personal characteristics, other personality traits and certain tendencies in behavior.

And, for some years now, one of the tendencies that could characterize narcissistic people is the propensity to consume more pornography than the average . This is, at least, what is deduced from research published in the Journal of sex & marital therapy.

The Sexuality of the Narcissist

What is the point of the significantly higher consumption of pornography by narcissistic people? According to the team of researchers who conducted the study, this is due to the way the classic narcissist focuses on himself when seeking pleasure.

Unlike other people, who seek reciprocity in pleasurable experiences, narcissists are more likely to use others as a simple means to get what they want. According to this interpretation, the consumption of pornography adapts perfectly to this type of demand ; most situations, performances and even the way in which it is filmed accentuate the instrumental role of the actors who appear on the scene, making them look like artificial beings who move just to satisfy the viewer.

That is, this would be a characteristic that expresses two features that were already known about narcissistic people: the lack of empathic connections and a more intense sexual motivation than usual in other population groups .

How was the study conducted?

For this research, a group of more than 250 people (63% of whom were women) between the ages of 18 and 61 were used as a sample.

Each of these people filled out a series of standardized personality tests, which made it possible to evaluate to what extent they were more or less narcissistic. In addition, they answered some questions about their pornography habits, or they could indicate that they were not using pornography.

Interesting results

About 80% of the people who participated said they had seen pornography online voluntarily at some point, and 44% of them said this was part of their current habits. On average, they consumed about 85 minutes of pornography per week.

But the main finding was that a significant relationship was found between the narcissism score obtained in the personality tests and the amount of pornography viewed .

This means, among other things, that the group of participants who had seen pornography online at one time included a significantly larger number of narcissists than the group of those who had never seen it.

But, in addition, the correlation between the degree of narcissism also corresponded to the amount of pornography seen, that is, the way in which this activity was incorporated into the day-to-day life of these people. The greater the frequency with which these scenes were viewed, the greater the possibility of belonging to the group of people with a higher score in narcissism, and those who at that time continued to view pornography were more narcissistic than those who no longer did.

Does pornography make us narcissists?

Apparently, these results could lead us to think that it is the consumption of pornography that makes us score higher on this personality trait. However, we must remember that correlation does not equal causality . From this study we have seen the description of what there is, but we do not know what produces what, in what sense the causality goes.

In other words, it could be that seeing this type of product would make us more narcissistic, but it could also be that narcissistic people in the beginning would simply consume more of this type of content on the Internet. To get an idea of what’s really going on, we’ll have to wait for more research to be done on the subject.

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