Pornography and Sexuality Research Papers at the 4th International Conference on Behavioral Addictions

ABSTRACT Building on the legacy of the three previous conferences since 2013, the 2017 International Conference on Behavioral Addictions (ICBA) offered one of the largest selections of original academic research into compulsive sexual behavior and pornography use ever presented. This review gives a flavor of the best papers and the key contributions to our fast-evolving understanding of compulsive sexuality and pornography use. This report is not fully comprehensive as the use of parallel sessions meant that we could not see all relevant papers. The Journal of Behavioral Addictions has published all abstracts in a special edition (volume 6, supplement 1). A single strand of the parallel sessions was wholly dedicated to research into sex and pornography. Taken collectively, the presentations demonstrated the strengths of several national research teams, in particular those from Germany, Poland, Hungary, Israel, and the United States. The plenary given for the sexual strand by Matthias Brand explored the I-PACE model (Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution) in specific Internet addictions, including for cybersex addiction. This suggested that the theoretical framework for studying and understanding sexual addictions is becoming more mature and robust.