However, Wilson said, "it's just a biological effect." He said the negative effects of pornography become more noticeable two to three weeks out from the last session. Because religious porn-users often try to stop looking at porn, he said, the effects are more apparent than regular users who have not tried to take a break.
"When you remove the addictive substance, food or drug, the brain starts to change and the level of changing it actually sprouts more connections that occur about two weeks out from your last use…[And] it makes the cravings greater and it also leads to higher levels of binging."
Wilson also highlighted two areas of the PCES that lead to a less accurate study: self-perception mixed with false equivalencies and an irrelevantly determined categories of positive or negative.
The PCES determines the substance of each question to be equivalent when they are not equal, he said, noting how "learning about anal sex" does not balance the negative "problems in your sex life."
"You can't take the average of a one to seven over on the good side and a one to seven over on the so-called negative side, and then say they got higher on this side. They are not equivalent."
The manner by which the questions were organized into positive and negative also appears to be arbitrary, he said, noting the researchers made assumptions they did not validate.
"If you look at their current study they have 2.62 on the positive effect of life in general. …But just step back a little bit, what is the highest you can get on that? Seven that is the highest average. So what does a 2.62 even mean?"
In an example from the questionnaire, the survey ranked "Has made you less sexually liberal" a negative question and "Has made you experiment more in your sex life" a positive question, but Wilson expressed doubt that everyone would agree with either of the determined charges.
Wilson said the questionnaire mathematically lean towards a positive result because the survey includes a greater quantity of positive questions.
"In other words, more questions that show a positive effect of porn than a negative effect of porn. So it's actually mathematically leaning that way and you don't have any counters to sexual knowledge."
Psychologist John Johnson referred to PCES as a "psychometric nightmare," and expressed doubt on survey's accuracy.
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"If I had been a reviewer on this manuscript, I would have probably rejected it on the basis of inadequate statistical methodology as well as various conceptual problems...It is impossible, given the nature of the data, to draw firm conclusions."
Correction: This article erroneously stated that a majority of questions on the Perceived Pornography Addiction Questionnaire involve shame. In fact, about one-third of the questions involve shame.
Perry West is a staff writer for Catholic News Agency. He graduated from Franciscan University with his bachelor's in English. Prior to his job at CNA, he worked in construction staffing and coffee.