The current study aims to test the hypothetical link between hentai pornography use, rape myths endorsement, and sexually aggressive strategies. Furthermore, it aims to capture if such a trajectory echoes across gender and human-realistic pornography. The work targeted a sample of 906 college students, of whom 533 were men and 373 were women, who completed an online survey to capture pornography use, rape myths, and sexually aggressive behavior. Participation criteria included being heterosexual, over 18, pursuing higher education, and using hentai pornography. The results revealed that the frequency of hentai pornography use predicts sexually aggressive behaviors in male and female participants. The endorsement of rape myths mediated the relationship between the frequency of hentai use and sexually aggressive behavior in both genders and the relationship between the intensity of hentai use and sexually aggressive behavior in men. When considering human-realistic pornography, it was found that the frequency of use predicts sexually aggressive behavior in female participants. The endorsement of rape myths mediated the relationship; no other relationship was found. This work aims to increase awareness about the implications of using hentai and human-realistic pornography and highlight the importance of sexual violence prevention in the college setting.
The evolution and rapid expansion of online hate speech perpetration (OHSP) behaviors among adolescents toward different groups contrast with the lack of theory-based and empirically evaluated programs targeting this phenomenon. This study, developed by the Spanish Volunteering Platform, contributes to reversing this situation by investigating the impact of a service-learning program to prevent OHSP among students in secondary education. To do so, a cluster-randomized research design was adopted with a sample of secondary school students (n = 60) from two public schools. After the random assignment of each class group to either the intervention or control condition, the service-learning program previously designed was implemented for 3 months. Regression results in model 7 with all predictors and controls yield a significant effect on the variable experimental group = 0.803, p < .05, and gender = 0.987, p < .05, explaining 45.9% of the variance. The effect size for this intervention was 0.42. From a theoretical perspective, participants are moving in the right direction to reduce and/or prevent OHSP behaviors, which demonstrates the theoretical utility of the theory of planned behavior in hate speech research. Finally, several recommendations are made to improve the impact of future replications or adaptations of this program.
Inferring causation from correlation can lead to erroneous explanations of violent behavior and the development and implementation of ineffective or even harmful interventions and policies. This article explores the inferences that violence researchers draw from evidence related to violent offending. We invited authors of articles published in violence journals to complete an online survey in which they were asked to identify a factor that may be a cause of violence, cite a study that demonstrates the factor is associated with violence, and provide their inferences from that study. We read each study and coded its research design (description of a sample [n = 9], cross-sectional/retrospective non-experiment [n = 18], single-wave longitudinal non-experiment [n = 10], multi-wave longitudinal non-experiment [n = 0], or randomized experiment [n = 5]) and the appropriate inferences (inter-rater reliability was adequate; κ = 0.73-1.00). Reassuringly, participants (N = 42; 57.1% in United States; 59.5% women) rarely indicated that their identified study demonstrated that their factor was a cause of violence (0.0%-16.7%) when the study was not a randomized experiment. However, many participants failed to acknowledge any plausible alternate interpretations (e.g., reverse causality, third variable) of the results from non-experimental studies (50.0%-88.9%). Moreover, most participants incorrectly selected a causal implication as following from the results of non-experimental studies (77.8%-100%). Our results suggest that even among authors of articles published in peer-review scientific journals on violence, many appear to infer causation from correlation.