While some sex differences are still up for debate, one that’s hard to argue away is men’s greater fondness for pornography.
Over the years I’ve heard men explain this in various ways. One of the most popular is that men are “more visual” than women, a convenient excuse for ogling at the beach.
Is there any science behind this? “More visual” is too vague to investigate, but some studies have offered insight about why men consume most of the world’s vast store of Internet porn.
Neurobiologist and anthropologist Michael Platt of Duke University is studying differences in how the sexes respond to pictures in general. On average, his research shows, men will pay to see images of women. But you have to pay women to look at images of men!
Platt started with similar studies in monkeys. While most animals are indifferent to photos even of individuals in their own species, monkeys and apes respond to pictures much as humans do.
Rhesus macaques that Platt studied, for example, easily recognized the faces of familiar monkeys. And they liked some faces more than others, though the face wasn’t always the favorite part.
Platt found that male macaques strongly preferred to look at pictures of females’ rear ends and dominant males’ faces. They liked them enough to pay, by sacrificing a chance to get a treat. But you had to bribe those same monkeys with treats to persuade them to look at female macaque faces or the faces of subordinate males.
Female monkeys’ rear ends develop pink swellings around the time they ovulate – critical information that it makes sense male monkeys would be wired to detect, said Platt.
Those same males may also gather potentially lifesaving information by studying dominant males who could kill them if crossed. Platt is still waiting to do a reverse study – to see what catches the eye of female macaques.
Meanwhile, he’s applied the same technique to humans, male and female.
He used images of clothed people from www.hotornot.com, setting up the experiment so subjects had to pay a small amount of money to look at these images. Male subjects generally were more than willing. Not the females.
“For the most part, you had to pay females to look at any male pictures – even those where the guys were rated super hot,” Platt said.
Subjects were asked to rate the hotornot pictures, too. Males enjoyed the task; many wanted to keep going after the hour was up, Platt said. Female subjects, on the other hand, were begging to stop after 10 minutes.
I could relate to those women, but not because I don’t like looking at pictures. I just don’t care for pictures of strangers.
Another study, out of Emory University, more directly addressed the question of pornography and sex differences. Scientists put men and women under a brain-scanning machine known as functional MRI and then handed them some naked photos.
This time, both men and women reported being aroused by the pictures, which featured nude men, nude women, and heterosexual couples having sex. Participants’ brains showed activity in the visual cortex and a few other regions. The researchers found only one difference between the sexes – in men, the pictures caused more activation of a primitive region known as the amygdala. It’s an area we share with rats.
“Historically the amygdala has been seen as the center for fear and learning,” said Emory University psychologist Kim Wallen, one of the study’s authors. “More recently it appears the amygdala is involved in emotion.”
He speculates that men may find the sex pictures more emotionally salient than women do. So men and women may be equally visual, but men on average have different visual interests.
The researchers say these studies may eventually help pinpoint why some people with autism and other disorders don’t show an interest in gazing at other humans, naked or clothed. It may also help explain why, for some men, porn can go from a guilty pleasure to a destructive addiction.
It’s a losing battle for those trying to fight such addictions by ridding society of pornography. A better understanding of ourselves may go much further.
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