Mind: Science Shows What Sexual Repression Actually Looks like

With the recent election still echoing in everyone's ears, and pundits pundificating about how conservative the country really is, this is a good time to remember the major study done about online pornography subscriptions just 18 months ago.

As reported in the Journal of Economic Perspectives,

• The rates at which people buy pornography are not wildly different from state to state;
• States where people vote for conservative candidates buy more porn than states in which people vote for progressive candidates.

And yes, this is after adjusting for factors including broadband access, income, and population.

According to credit card receipts from a national provider of adult entertainment, eight of the top ten pornography-consuming states went Republican in the 2008 election. And the trend goes beyond voting. For example, states where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage" bought more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. The same difference emerged for the statement "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behavior."

And of course the state with the highest per capita purchase of online pornography is ... Utah. Of course.

For more, see Science Shows What Sexual Repression Actually Looks like by Marty Klein, November 8, 2010 at Psychology Today.