Rationale --------- Across two independent cross-sectional studies of heterosexual romantic dyads we have found consistent evidence of significant positive interactions between actors' and partners' solitary pornography use when predicting sexual and relationship satisfaction. These interactions suggest that sexual and relationship satisfaction are lower when couples are discordant rather than concordant in pornography use (or non-use). These effects hold after controlling for couples' frequency of shared pornography use and do not appear to be moderated by gender (see Study 1, Study 2). In one of these samples, this interaction effect also extends to the prediction of sexual communication and intimacy / closeness (Kohut, Balzarini, Fisher, & Campbell, in prep). Further, similar tests of the interaction between actors' and partners' attitudes towards pornography reveal a similar pattern with respect to sexual satisfaction. Specifically, sexual satisfaction appears to be lower among individuals who enjoy pornography compared to those who do not enjoy pornography, UNLESS, their partner also enjoys pornography. These effects were not moderated by gender, and these associations persisted over time (3 six-month intervals). Taken together, these effects reinforce our view that correlates of concordant / discordant pornography use may be partially rooted in similarities and differences in sexual attitudes. The current study seeks to extend this line of inquiry by predicting sexual and relationship satisfaction with actors' and partners' solitary and shared pornography use in a longitudinal sample of heterosexual couples. Method ------ The data come from a 13-wave longitudinal (T0-T12) study of romantic couples recruited from a university campus and the wider community provided by Amanda Shaw and Dr. Ronald Rogge (full details can be found in Shaw, 2017). Due to substantial attrition and idiosyncrasies in measurement our analyses will use the data gathered from T1 through T6. Relationship satisfaction was measured with CSI-4 (Funk & Rogge, 2007). Sexual satisfaction was measured with four items taken from the 12 item QSI-12 (Shaw & Rogge, 2016). These four items consisted of two items that were used to measure sexual satisfaction and two items that were used measure sexual dissatisfaction. Solitary pornography use was measured by asking participants about the frequency that they had viewed sexual materials or engaged in sexually charged situations (chatting / strip clubs) without their partner in the past week. Shared pornography use was assessed by asking participants about the frequency with which they had engaged in the same behaviors with a partner. Preliminary Analysis -------------------- Independent of Kohut et al's and Russel et al.'s initial research findings, Shaw and Rogge conducted unregistered analyses of this dataset with a similar rationale in mind. A three-level (time nested in partner nested in relationship) hierarchical linear model was used to predict sexual and relationship satisfaction using each partners' solitary pornography use, their independently reported estimates of shared pornography use, gender, sex drive, time, and the interaction between actors' and partners' solitary pornography use (as well as other interactions with several other variables). They found that for couples in which the men did not report solitary pornography use at baseline, women’s solitary pornography use at baseline predicted marginally lower relationship satisfaction in their male partners (b = -.36, p = .091). In contrast, for couples in which men reported solitary pornography use at baseline, women’s solitary pornography use was not significantly related to their male partners’ baseline relationship satisfaction (b = .14, p = .253). For couples in which men reported shared pornography use at baseline, women’s report of shared pornography use at baseline predicted significantly higher sexual satisfaction with their male partners over the next 6 months (b = 1.90, p = .013). In contrast, for couples in which men did not report baseline shared pornography use, women’s reports of the presence or absence of baseline shared pornography use was unrelated to men’s sexual satisfaction. Finally, for couples in which men reported shared pornography use within a wave, women’s reports of shared pornography use in those same waves predicted higher relationship satisfaction (b = .36, p = .002) and sexual satisfaction (b = .48, p = .003) for women in that wave. In contrast, for couples in which men did not report shared pornography use within a wave, women’s reports of shared pornography use within that same wave were unrelated to women’s relationship satisfaction (b = .08, p = .550) and sexual satisfaction (b = .11, p = .432) in that wave. Predictions / Research Questions -------------------------------- H1: On the basis of previous findings, and preliminary results, we expect that partners' solitary pornography use will moderate the association between actors' solitary pornography use and relationship satisfaction such that satisfaction will be lower when actors and partners are discrepant in their pornography use. Further, we expect this effect to emerge even after controlling for shared pornography use. H2: On the basis of previous findings, and preliminary results, we expect that shared pornography use (aggregated across partner estimates) will be positively correlated with relationship satisfaction after controlling for both partners' solitary pornography use as well as the interaction between such use. H3: Despite the indications of gendered effects in the preliminary analyses outlined above, previous findings across three datasets consistently indicate that the relationships proposed in H1 and H2 are not moderated by gender. Given the relatively small gender differences described in the preliminary analyses, we suspect that formal tests for moderation of the associations in H1 and H2 by gender will result in null effects. H4: We previously found that the interaction between actors' and partners' attitudes towards pornography at baseline was not significantly moderated by time when predicting relationship satisfaction over time. If the effects of concordant vs. discordant pornography use are driven by similarities / dissimilarities in attitudes, we should expect a similar temporal pattern in the current sample. That is, the expected association between relationship satisfaction (measured at each wave) and the interaction between actors' and partners' pornography use (measured at T1) should not be moderated by time. We believe that the temporal stability in the interaction effect likely reflects relative consistency of pornography-related attitudes and behaviors over time, in which case, the average contextual association between relationship satisfaction and the interaction between actors' and partners' pornography use at each wave should also not be moderated by time. H5-H8: The pattern of relationships described above are also expected to emerge when predicting sexual satisfaction. That is, sexual satisfaction should be associated with an interaction between actors' and partners' pornography use (H5), and couples shared use of pornography (H6). Further, these associations should not be moderated by gender (H7) or time (H8). The nature of the relationships outlined in H5 and H6 will vary in direction depending on which operationalization of sexual satisfaction is used (i.e. sexual satisfaction vs. sexual dissatisfaction). R1: In our previous samples, we have been unable to find quadratic effects along the line of incongruence (see Shannock et al. 2010) between actors' and partners' pornography use, and with respect to attitudes towards pornography, we found an unexpected quadratic effect along the line of congruence. Given the inconsistencies in these results, it is unclear whether quadratic effects along the lines of congruence / incongruence will emerge in the current sample, but they will be investigated to further understand the phenomenon under study.