BMF CP49: Spicy worries: The impacts of pornography-induced stress and sexual distress on teenagers’ attitudes toward the opposite sex

Tam-Tri Le
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3384-4827

August 17, 2023

1. Project description

1.1. Objective

This study examines how pornography-induced stress and sexual distress (mental troubles caused by thoughts about sexual activity) affect two problems: 1) feeling shy and uncomfortable toward the opposite sex, and, 2) decreased interest in the opposite sex. Gender (male coded as 0 and female coded as 1) serves as the moderator in all these relationships to identify whether male or female teenagers are more affected.

1.2. Materials

In this research project, we use a dataset of 3784 high school students from China [1]. The research project follows the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) [2-4]. The bayesvl R package is employed for statistical analyses [5]. Data and code snippets for this initial analysis were deposited at https://osf.io/ukh42/

1.3. Main findings

Initial analysis shows that both pornography-induced stress and sexual distress increase the likelihood of feeling shy and uncomfortable toward the opposite sex, where the former effect is stronger in males, and the latter effect is stronger in females (see Figure 1).



Figure 1. Posterior distributions for Model 1 (uncomfortable with the opposite sex)

Both pornography-induced stress and sexual distress increase the likelihood of losing interest in the opposite sex, where the former effect does not have any clear gender difference, and the latter effect is stronger in females (see Figure 2).



Figure 2. Posterior distributions for Model 2 (decreased interest in the opposite sex)

2. Collaboration procedure

Portal users should follow these steps for registering to participate in this research project:

1. Create an account on the website (preferably using an institutional email).
2. Comment your name, affiliation, and desired project role below this post.
3. Patiently wait for the formal agreement on the project from the mentor.

If you have further inquiries, please contact us at: tri.letam@phenikaa-uni.edu.vn

All the resources for conducting and writing the research manuscript will be distributed upon project participation.

Mentor for this project: Tam-Tri Le

Members who have joined this project: Ruining Jin.

The research project strictly adheres to scientific integrity standards, including authorship rights and obligations [6], without incurring an economic burden at participants’ expenses [7].

References

[1] Chen X, Liu T, Luo J, Ren S. (2020). Data for teenagers’ stressor, mental health, coping style, social support, parenting style and self-efficacy in South China. Data in Brief, 29, 105202.

[2] Nguyen MH, La VP, Le TT, Vuong QH. (2022). Introduction to Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics: An innovative method for social and psychological research. MethodsX, 9, 101808.

[3] Vuong QH, Nguyen MH, La VP. (2022). The mindsponge and BMF analytics for innovative thinking in social sciences and humanities. De Gruyter.

[4] Vuong QH. (2023). Mindsponge Theory. De Gruyter.

[5] La VP, Vuong QH. (2019). bayesvl: Visually Learning the Graphical Structure of Bayesian Networks and Performing MCMC with ‘Stan’. The Comprehensive R Archive Network.

[6] Vuong QH. (2020). Reform retractions to make them more transparent. Nature, 582(7811), 149.

[7] Vuong QH. (2018). The (ir)rational consideration of the cost of science in transition economies. Nature Human Behaviour, 2(1), 5.