Moral incongruence and compulsive sexual behavior: Results from cross-sectional interactions and parallel growth curve analyses.

Abstract

Despite controversies about the diagnosis, the World Health Organization recently elected to include compulsive sexual behavior disorder in the 11th edition of the International Classification of Diseases. Both recent and remote works have suggested that various cultural factors such as personal religiousness and morality can influence both the experience and expression of compulsive sexual behaviors. Because prior works have indicated that pornography use is likely to be the most common expression of compulsive sexual behavior, the present work sought to examine whether moral incongruence about pornography use may account for a substantive part of self-reports of compulsive sexual behavior. In 2 studies involving 4 samples, the present work tested the hypothesis that moral incongruence would positively predict self-reported compulsivity in pornography use. In Study 1, across 3 samples (Sample 1, N = 467; Sample 2, N = 739; Sample 3, N = 1,461), including 2 matched to U.S. nationally representative norms (Samples 2 and 3), results indicated that moral incongruence was a substantive and robust predictor of self-reported compulsivity. In Study 2 (baseline N = 850), parallel process latent growth curve analyses over the course of 1 year revealed that the trajectories of pornography use, self-reported compulsivity, and moral disapproval of such use covaried together over time. Collectively, these results underscore the contention that personal morality may influence individuals’ self-perceptions of their sexual behaviors, which, in turn, may complicate efforts to accurately diagnose compulsive sexual behavior disorder.

Evaluating Pornography Problems Due to Moral Incongruence Model

“…However, there is also an additional issue here: these kinds of statements do not accurately appraise moral incongruence, but rather moral disapproval. 37 This remark is consistent with some of the earlier works led by Grubbs et al, 36,38 in which the label "moral disapproval" was used. The reason is 2 fold: (i) the variable lacks the component of awareness or sensitivity to one's own behavior transgressing believed norms (refer to the study by Wright 22 ) and (ii) most studies on the relationship between moral incongruence and self-perceived addiction are based on subjects who declare a lifetime exposure to pornography-this is also the case for the present study.…”

“…It is possible that subjects who use pornography rarely (eg, once or twice a year, or even with greater frequency) and see pornography use as to some degree morally wrong still do not experience feelings of incongruence because occasional transgressions can be easily ignored. In the most recent work, Grubbs et al 37 operationalize moral incongruence as the interaction between moral disapproval and pornography use, which is a significant improvement. However, it addresses the second point delineated previously, but not the first one, as this method of measurement still does not reflect the component of awareness or sensitivity to misalignment between one's own behavior and norms.…”

Pornography Use and Psychological Science: A Call for Consideration

“…Importantly, moral incongruence is one of the most robust and consistent predictors of self-reported addiction to pornography. These findings are clear in cross-sectional, nationally representative U.S. samples and longitudinally over a 1-year time period (Grubbs, Kraus, et al, 2020). In short, there is evidence that religiously based moral disapproval of pornography is uniquely predictive of self-reports of addiction to pornography, suggesting that moral incongruence might obfuscate some aspects of the diagnostic process for CSBD.…”

Frequency of use, moral incongruence and religiosity and their relationships with self‐perceived addiction to pornography, internet use, social networking and online gaming

“…Additionally, in the current article the term 'moral incongruence' is used for consistency with the work of Grubbs et al [34]. However, recently it has been suggested that the measured construct may be better termed 'moral disapproval', and new ways of measuring 'moral incongruence' that may arise from 'moral disapproval' warrant consideration and testing in future research [71,75]. Last, when operationalizing variables, we followed work by Grubbs et al 2019 [34] and used short measures, including the precise one-item indicator of moral incongruence (see discussion on measuring moral incongruence [71]).…”