The impact of virtual reality versus 2D pornography on sexual arousal and presence

The psychological impact of pornography consumption remains a contentious issue, with perspectives ranging from seeing it as a healthy expression of sexuality to a potentially dangerous addiction. Understanding how novel technologies can change how pornography is experienced is crucial for grappling with the effects of pornography. With the advent of consumer virtual reality (VR) technology in recent years, VR pornography has become increasingly popular. To date, we are not aware of any research that has compared people's responses to VR versus typical pornography. In our study, 95 heterosexual participants (47 females) viewed either VR or 2D pornography (between subjects), from both voyeuristic and first person perspectives (within subjects), and rated their subjective arousal and presence. Consistent with excitement about VR, men found VR pornography more arousing than 2D scenes, but this was not the case for women. Rather than VR being generally experienced as more arousing, we found that a first person or ‘participant’ perspective consistently induced greater arousal relative to a voyeuristic view, regardless of presentation medium in both genders. However, VR did consistently elicit a greater sense of presence than typical pornography, and presence was positively correlated with sexual arousal. Our findings indicate that under certain conditions, VR can enhance the experience of arousal and pleasure in response to pornography, and generally facilitates presence. Clearly, however, the immersive capabilities of technology are not the only, and likely not the strongest, predictor of sexual arousal, perhaps tempering concerns that VR could greatly exacerbate compulsive pornography consumption.