Using porn has a lot in common with gambling, especially now that pornography is delivered through devices that allow you to rapidly click through a never-ending stream of stimulating material. Hoping to find just the right porn site, the exact sexual activity you want, or the ultimate fantasy partner, can make you feel just like you do when hoping for a jackpot at a slot machine in Vegas. As businessman Nigel explains, “I know exactly what I am looking for in terms of a specific look and a specific type of sex. I know it’s there somewhere. I love the hunt, looking and searching for the best and most exciting, my ideal. And there’s always the chance I will be able to find something better than I had before.”
However, when searching for porn you only get your ideal content—a picture of the “perfect” woman or man, or the sexual act of your dreams—every now and then. This type of setup is called an “intermittent reward system,” and it is designed to hook the user just like casino gaming machines. That’s why it can be so easy to be at your computer and look up at the clock and find that several hours have passed in what seems like just minutes.
Online pornography has an intermittent reward system that rewards on a variable ratio schedule, meaning you never know just how many photos you will need to look at before you find one you want. The number keeps changing. This is the most potent method for shaping behavior. In scientific experiments, pigeons put on this type of random reinforcement schedule almost starve to death pecking at a single dot that might produce just one pellet of food.
The brief delay that occurs, that moment of erotic anticipation, just before you download a picture or click on a site, can trigger additional release of the pleasure chemical dopamine in the brain. Thus, the gambling-like nature of online pornography combined with its sexual turnon doubles its potential for creating an addiction to porn. With online porn, and porn that is accessed on demand through any device, you can be influenced not only by the content of what you see, but also by the delivery system with which it is presented. The gambling nature of porn was a lot less potent in the past, when porn magazines came in the mail, one issue a month.
Love Affair
Do people fall in love, or at least in lust, with porn? You bet. Many of the people we interviewed were attracted to porn because it provided them with a temporary or alternative sexual outlet. While they weren’t writing love poems or songs to porn, they often spoke of their relationship with porn in terms often reserved for love affairs. “It’s sexually thrilling,” “I was with it for hours,” “I can’t wait to see it again,” and “Porn gave me the best orgasms ever.”
While porn may seem like a way to have sex with another partner without actually having sex with another partner, it is more real than it seems. Although the women (and men) in porn magazines and videos are two-dimensional and made out of paper or digital dots on a screen, focusing on them through fantasy while masturbating can generate feelings similar to relating to a real human in real life.
As we mentioned earlier, watching porn stimulates the release of powerful chemicals, such as dopamine and testosterone. These chemicals not only relate to sexual arousal and pleasure, but also are released in real life when someone is sexually attracted to and falls in love with someone else. In addition, powerful human bonding hormones, such as oxytocin and vasopressin, are released with orgasm. They contribute to establishing a lasting emotional attachment with whomever, or whatever, you happen to be with or thinking about at the time. The more orgasms you have with porn, the more sexually and emotionally attached to it you’ll become.
A relationship with porn can act like an affair. It can take time and energy away from an existing intimate relationship. People who use porn often operate with the same kind of secrecy and deception as someone having a sexual affair. When a porn user is confronted by a partner, there is often denial, lying, and attempts to cover up the wrongdoing. Without realizing it, maintaining a “love affair” with porn can become more important than staying connected to someone in real life. Also, if you use porn regularly, the mental images and scenarios of porn can keep playing in your mind during sex, making it hard to feel connected and intimate with the real person in your life.