Date of Award
1996
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Bernice Lott
Abstract
This study investigated the influence of contemporary music on young adults’ evaluations of and reponses to sexually explicit erotic, nonviolent pornographic and violent pornographic depictions. Two hundred and ninety-four women and men respondents were administered a survey to assess their experiences with various types of media, including their use of sexually explicit materials. Upon completion of the survey, respondents were exposed to one of three types of music primes (sexist rap, neutral rap, neutral rock/pop), and then viewed six sexually explicit slides (2 erotic, 2 nonviolent pornographic, 2 violent pornographic). Respondents were asked to evaluate each slide by means of a semantic differential scale, and to create stories about the characters pictured in each slide by means of a story completion task. It was hypothesized that young adults exposed to sexist rap music would differ from comparable young adults exposed to neutral rap or neutral pop/rock in their evaluations of sexually explicit visual materials and the types of stories created about heterosexual couples presented in visual sexually explicit materials. It was also expected that young adults exposed to sexist rap music who also have “high” levels of prior exposure to rap music would differ from young adults exposed to sexist rap music who have “low” levels of prior exposure to rap music in their evaluations of sexually explicit visual materials and the types of stories created about heterosexual couples presented in visual sexually explicit materials. Young adults exposed to the neutral rap and neutral pop/rock music conditions who have “high” levels of prior exposure to rap music were expected to differ from young adults exposed to neutral rap music and neutral pop/rock who have “low” levels of prior exposure to rap music in their evaluations of sexually explicit visual materials and in the types of stories created about heterosexual couples presented in visual sexually explicit materials. The results of the study did not support any of the specific hypotheses. The findings from both the quantitative and qualitative data analyses, however, do provide further support for feminist claims that there is a conceptual distinction between erotica and pornography which can be operationalized. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of their value for further investigations on the topic of media images.
Recommended Citation
Saris, Renee N., "The Influence of Contemporary Music on Responses to Visually Presented Mainstream Sexually Explicit Images" (1996). Open Access Dissertations. Paper 981.
https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/oa_diss/981
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