Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law

over into subjects’ judgments of female victims in

other contexts. Men who were exposed to large doses

of filmed violence against women judged the victim of

violent assault and rape to be significantly less injured

than did the control groups.

The Liberal Normative Theory

This perspective emphasizes that the free flow of ideas

is so valuable to the discovery of sexual truths and

erotic art and literature that it should be interrupted only

when a grave harm to another person occurs as a result

of exposure to sex-related materials. The threshold for

censorship should be set high to guard against frivolous

attempts to censor ideas that are taboo now but may be

acceptable later. This position emphasizes that as long

as the recipient of sexually explicit messages restricts

his or her behavior to private actions, such as sexual

fantasy, or only acts on these ideas with a consenting

partner, society has no right to interfere. For example,

only if it can be shown that consumption of sex depic-

tions is causally related to rape or other violent crimes

can the government regulate such depictions. No effect

short of these direct threats of violence is sufficient jus-

tification for society to interfere with the individual’s

right to view sex-related materials and with the right of

others to produce it. This position embraces findings

such as the meta-analyses focusing on the use of

pornography by convicted sex offenders, as compared

with men from the noncriminal general population.

Studies have examined several types of dependent mea-

sures, including frequency of pornography use, age at

first exposure, the degree to which pornography was a

prelude to some sexual act, and degree of sexual

arousal. The findings showed a slight difference but not

one that was judged to be reliable.

This theory of freedom of expression has led to

concerns with methodological problems in laboratory

studies on the effects of sexually explicit materials.

For example, in the laboratory, only attitudes toward

rape or, at best, physiological arousal can be measured,

not, of course, actual rapes. However, these critics

point out, when privately consumed, pornography is

often associated with masturbation or consenting sex,

and thus, laboratory settings may be dissimilar to the

typical experience with pornography. By attempting

to simply arouse subjects in the laboratory, such studies

ignore completely the potential that pornography con-

sumption and masturbation may serve as a substitute

for rape that results from the use of pornography to

release sexual tension.

These critics note that the incidence of rape in the

United States has actually declined in the past 25

years, while pornography has become freely available

to teenagers and adults through the Internet. Studies

have shown, for example, that while the nationwide

incidence of rape was showing a drastic decline, the

incidence of rape in the four states having the least

access to the Internet showed an increase over the

same time period. The four states having the most

access to the Internet have shown declines in rape.

More sophisticated analyses controlling for offender

age have found that the effect of the Internet on rape

is concentrated among those for whom access to the

Internet is greatest—males aged 15 to 19 years. They

have also found that the advent of the Internet was

associated with a reduction in rape incidence. However,

the growth in Internet usage has had no apparent effect

on other crimes.

Daniel Linz

See alsoMedia Violence and Behavior; Obscenity

Further Readings

Allen, M., D’Alessio, D., & Emmers-Sommer, T. M. (2000).

Reactions of criminal sexual offenders to pornography: A

meta-analytic summary. In Roloff (Ed.),Communication

yearbook 22(pp. 139–169). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Allen, M. D., Emmers, T. M., Gebhardt, L., & Giery, M.

(1995). Pornography and rape myth acceptance.

Journal of Communication, 45,5–26.

Linz, D., & Malamuth, N. (1993). Pornography. Newbury

Park, CA: Sage.

Linz, D. G., Donnerstein, E., & Penrod, S. (1988). Effects of

long-term exposure to violent and sexually degrading

depictions of women. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology, 55,758–768.

Malamuth, N. M., Addison, T., & Koss, M. (2000).

Pornography and sexual aggression: Are there reliable

effects and can we understand them? Annual Review of

Sex Research, 11,26–91.

POSTDOCTORALRESIDENCIES

IN FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY

Forensic psychology was formally recognized as a

specialty by the American Psychological Association

(APA) in 2001 (through the Committee for Recognition

Postdoctoral Residencies in Forensic Psychology——— 605

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