Life History Theory and Female Readers of Pornography

This study explores the possibility that female interest in pornography might signal amore male-like reproductive strategy. According to life history theory, early attachmentexperiences have the effect of setting reproductive strategies as restrictive or unrestrictive. It wasfound that female readers of pornography were significantly more likely to be from divorcedhomes, to be divorced themselves, to assess their parental attachment less positively and to reportless positive affect than female non-readers. Female readers were also found to scoresignificantly closer to males than to female nonreaders on six of eight sexuality-related indices.On the two occasions when they differed significantly from males, they also differed from femalenon-readers. Male readers and non-readers did not differ on any of the indices of sexuality, butthey did report less positive attachment experiences.