Adolescent sexual behavior tied to motion picture sexual content exposure, says MU researcher

Results important to parents/motion picture industry

2012-07-26

(Press-News.org) COLUMBIA, Mo. — Young people who watch more sexual content from movies also tend to engage in more sexual behavior and begin sexual activity at an earlier age, according to a University of Missouri researcher's study.

"We can't say that watching sexual content in movies is directly responsible for adolescents' sexual behavior," said Ross O'Hara, currently a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Missouri, who conducted the research with other psychological scientists while at Dartmouth College. "However, there is a correlation between the two. Sensation seeking, or the tendency to seek more novel and intense sexual stimulation, does seem to increase in young people who watched more movies with sexually explicit content."

To conduct his study, O'Hara and his colleagues recruited 1,228 participants between 12 and 14 years of age. Each participant reported which movies they had seen out of randomly selected lists of 50 top-grossing films from 1998 to 2004. These films had previously been evaluated according to the amount of sexual content they contained.

Six years later, the participants were surveyed to find out how old they were when they became sexually active and how risky their sexual behavior might have been. Some of the questions included:

Did they use condoms consistently? Were they monogamous or did they have multiple partners? How many partners did they have?

Statistical methods were used to separate out the influence of exposure to sexual content in movies from the influences of socio-economic variables, family structure, TV use, and other variables.

The results of the study found that adolescents who are exposed to more sexual content in movies start having sex at younger ages, have more sexual partners, and are less likely to use condoms with casual sexual partners.

"One important observation from our evaluation of the films was that few showed contraceptive use or safe sexual practices," O'Hara said. "When safe sex is portrayed in films, it is often in comedies and is presented as an inconvenience or embarrassment. The motion picture industry could make an effort to show healthier, safer behaviors, just as they have reduced the amount of smoking shown in films."

The parents of adolescents have a role to play in tempering the influence of films on their children as well, O'Hara said. To minimize risky sexual behavior later in life, parents can restrict the amounts of sexual content children view and educate them about the consequences of sexual behavior that are often left out of films.

###The study, "Exposure to Sexual Content in Popular Movies Predicts Earlier Sexual Debut and Increased Sexual Risk-taking," has been accepted for publication in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. O'Hara conducted this research while at Dartmouth College.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Newfound gene may help bacteria survive in extreme environments

2012-07-26

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- In the days following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, methane-eating bacteria bloomed in the Gulf of Mexico, feasting on the methane that gushed, along with oil, from the damaged well. The sudden influx of microbes was a scientific curiosity: Prior to the oil spill, scientists had observed relatively few signs of methane-eating microbes in the area. Now researchers at MIT have discovered a bacterial gene that may explain this sudden influx of methane-eating bacteria. This gene enables bacteria to survive in extreme, oxygen-depleted environments, ...

Identifying the arrogant boss

2012-07-26

VIDEO: Are all bosses arrogant? Click here for more information. Akron, Ohio, July 25, 2012 – Arrogant bosses can drain the bottom line because they are typically poor performers who cover up their insecurities by disparaging subordinates, leading to organizational dysfunction and employee turnover. A new measure of arrogance, developed by researchers at The University of Akron and Michigan State University, can help organizations identify arrogant managers before they have ...

Protected areas face threats in sustaining biodiversity, Penn's Daniel Janzen and colleagues report

2012-07-26

PHILADELPHIA — Establishing protection over a swath of land seems like a good way to conserve its species and its ecosystems. But in a new study, University of Pennsylvania biologist Daniel Janzen joins more than 200 colleagues to report that protected areas are still vulnerable to damaging encroachment, and many are suffering from biodiversity loss. "If you put a boundary around a piece of land and install some bored park guards and that's all you do, the park will eventually die," said Janzen, DiMaura Professor of Conservation Biology in Penn's Department of Biology. ...

Citizen science helps unlock European genetic heritage

2012-07-26

A University of Sheffield academic is helping a team of citizen scientists to carry out crucial research into European genetic heritage. Citizen Scientists are not required to have a scientific background or training, but instead they possess a passion for the subject and are increasingly being empowered by the scientific community to get involved in research. Dr Andy Grierson, from the University of Sheffield's Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN), has helped a team of citizen scientists from Europe and North America to identify vital new clues to tell ...

Medical follow-up in celiac disease is less than optimal

2012-07-26

Follow-up exams for patients with celiac disease are often inadequate and highly variable, according to a new study in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official clinical practice journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA). "In the group of celiac disease patients that we observed, we found that very few of them had medical follow-up that would be in keeping with even the most lax interpretation of current guidelines," said Joseph A. Murray, MD, AGAF, of Mayo Clinic and lead author of this study. "Doctors and patients need to be aware of ...

Global expansion all about give and take, study finds

2012-07-26

EAST LANSING, Mich. — The key to successful global business expansion is spreading operations across multiple countries, rather than trying to dominate a region or market, according to a new study led by Michigan State University researchers. In addition, since global expansion is costly for service industries, manufacturing industries will profit most, said Tomas Hult, director of MSU's International Business Center. Led by Hult and Ahmet Kirca, associate professor of marketing, the study is the largest ever conducted to examine the effect of multinationality on firm ...

Spatial skills may be improved through training, new review finds

2012-07-26

Spatial skills--those involved with reading maps and assembling furniture--can be improved if you work at it, that's according to a new look at the studies on this topic by researchers at Northwestern University and Temple. The research published this month in Psychological Bulletin, the journal of the American Psychological Association, is the first comprehensive analysis of credible studies on such interventions. Improving spatial skills is important because children who do well at spatial tasks such as putting together puzzles are likely to achieve highly in science, ...

Contaminant transport in the fungal pipeline

2012-07-26

This press release is available in German. Leipzig. Fungi are found throughout the soil with giant braiding of fine threads. However, these networks have surprising functions. Only a few years ago researchers from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) discovered that bacteria travel over the fungal threads through the labyrinth of soil pores, much the same as on a highway. Now, together with British colleagues from the University of Lancaster, the UFZ researchers have come upon another phenomenon. Accordingly, the fungal networks also transports contaminants ...

Miriam researchers urge physicians to ask younger men about erectile dysfunction symptoms

2012-07-26

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Although erectile dysfunction (ED) has been shown to be an early warning sign for heart disease, some physicians – and patients – still think of it as just as a natural part of "old age." But now an international team of researchers, led by physicians at The Miriam Hospital, say it's time to expand ED symptom screening to include younger and middle-aged men. In an article appearing in the July issue of the American Heart Journal, they encourage physicians to inquire about ED symptoms in men over the age of 30 who have cardiovascular risk factors, such ...

In muscular dystrophy, what matters to patients and doctors can differ

2012-07-26

Complex, multi-system diseases like myotonic dystrophy – the most common adult form of muscular dystrophy – require physicians and patients to identify which symptoms impact quality of life and, consequently, what treatments should take priority. However, a new study out this month in the journal Neurology reveals that there is often a disconnect between the two groups over which symptoms are more important, a phenomenon that not only impacts care but also the direction of research into new therapies. "In order to design better therapies we must first develop a clear ...

Adolescent sexual behavior tied to motion picture sexual content exposure, says MU researcher

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: