This study examined the effects of exposure to obscene materials and suggestive sexual crime news on sexual emotion, perception, attitude and behavior. Research on the effects of sexual stimulation through media has usually been focused on the influen...
This study examined the effects of exposure to obscene materials and suggestive sexual crime news on sexual emotion, perception, attitude and behavior. Research on the effects of sexual stimulation through media has usually been focused on the influence of fictional materials, namely, obscene materials, and most of previous studies reported that exposure to obscene materials induces sexual impulse and even can lead to sexual violence. On the other hand, studies that conducted content analysis of sexual crime reports in newspapers argue that such news emphasize suggestiveness for stimulating readers’ interest and even inducing copycat crimes rather than dealing with the seriousness, causes and preventive measures of sexual crimes and, consequently, are likely to make social efforts to cope with sexual violence inefficient. With this background, this study predicted that the higher the level of suggestive description in sexual crime news covering non-fiction contents, the more negative effects similar to those of obscene materials such news would produce. A total of 135 male college students participated in the study.The results of this study are summarized as follows. With regard to the effects of exposure to obscene materials, first, the college student group exposed highly to obscene materials showed higher perception of instrumental sex than the group exposed lowly. Second, the college student group exposed highly to obscene materials had a stronger intention to commit sexual delinquencies than the group exposed lowly. Third, exposure to obscene materials and the fear of crime caused interaction with the suggestiveness of sexual crime news. Finally, the suggestiveness of sexual crime news did not have a significant effect expected in the hypothesis except its interaction with exposure to obscene materials. However, college students who read highly suggestive crime news showed a significant difference from those who did not in stimulation among the sub-factors of arousal.