Science AMA Series: I’m Taylor Kohut at Western University and I want to
talk about porn, what it is, and how it may impact the way that people
think, feel, and behave. AMA!
Abstract
When asked, I used to tell people that I study the impact of pornography
use, emphasizing “impact.” I guess I just didn’t want to give the
wrong impression (“People pay you to do what?”). So, much of my
research has focused on experimental and survey investigations of impact
of pornography on sexual thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Some of it
even pops up in r/science on occasion. As a sex-positive researcher with
half a brain, not everyone likes what I have to say; popular writer
Jonathan Van Maren has characterized me as Marlboro Man of porn, and the
well-intentioned folks over at yourbrainonporn.com have filed my work
under “Questionable / Misleading Studies.” I’m thinking about getting
t-shirts printed.. Recently, my work is shifting more towards the nature
and structure of sexual materials. What is porn? What isn’t porn? Wow
can we best measure porn use in surveys? And how can the content of porn
be divided up into psychologically relevant taxonomies? (Specifically,
I’m trying to raise money to develop a new tool for crowdsourcing the
content description of pornography to this end:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/porn-genome-project-app-science/ or
check out http://www.pornforscience.com. Porn for Science - Studying
Your Shame). Which now means that I not only study the effects of
pornography, but porn itself (“Yes Great Aunt Kathy, I get paid to
watch porn.”). I’m currently a postdoctoral fellow and adjunct
professor that Western University, where I also earned by PhD in social
psychology in 2014. Thanks everybody for your questions! It’s been fun!
If you’re interested in talking further with me about research, shoot me
an email at tkohut at uwo dot ca