Apr 7, 2008 5:00 AM PDT    Text size: 

The study, which was written by Martin Hald and Neil Malamuth, found that those who watch hardcore pornography the most, pleasure themselves from it the most and who consider their source material to be the most realistic, also perceive the greatest positive effects from it.

The respondents also credited porn with improving their sex lives, their sexual knowledge and attitudes toward the opposite sex, and even their general quality of life.

Lead author Hald did acknowledge, however, that people tend to mitigate the effects of media on their own behavior, sometimes to justify increased consumption. Other studies have come to strikingly different conclusions than the Denmark study regarding porn's impact on individuals and families.

But co-author Malamuth, who is associate professor and chairman of the Department of Communication Studies at UCLA and co-edited of the book, Pornography and Sexual Aggression, published a paper in 2007 that provided a measured assessment of pornography's effect on individual behavior.

"In certain people who are already inclined to be sexually aggressive," Malamuth wrote, "it adds fuel to the fire. But for the majority of men, we don't find negative effects."