Attitudes toward women and aggressive behavior. For obvious ethical, moral, and legal reasons, researchers have not conducted experiments to determine whether exposure to material in which high levels of sexual explicitness and violence are both present leads to increased sexual violence. They have, however, looked at whether men with a history of such exposure are more likely to have committed sex crimes. Sex offenders tend to come from restrictive and punitive home environments. Compared to non-offenders, they have had more undesirable experiences during childhood, including heightened exposure to sexual and physical abuse. Some offenders have had more exposure to explicit materials than other men, but early exposure alone does not increase the risk of becoming a sex offender.
In controlled laboratory research, individuals have been exposed to material containing (a) both aggression and explicit sex, (b) only aggression, and (c) only the sexual material. The results suggest it is exposure to aggression that triggers aggressive behavior. Exposure to sexual material alone does not increase aggression toward women. For most people, aggression and sex are incompatible. For a small percentage of men predisposed to aggression toward women, however, combining sex and aggression does stimulate arousal and aggressive responses.
The impact of exposure to sexist, demeaning material depends on the person's pre-existing attitudes. Under some conditions, those predisposed to negative views become more calloused and accepting of these negative views
