Table 1. Correlation Matrix (Men above the diagonal, women below)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*sig. at P=.05

**sig. at P=.01

 

             The pattern of findings is different for women.  Porn exposure is not significantly correlated with rape supportive attitudes among women.  It should be kept in mind that women in the sample scored much lower on rape supportive attitudes than did men, and also viewed pornography much less frequently.  Rape supportive attitudes were associated with patriarchal ideology, and negatively associated with feminist self labeling.  

             Returning to the men, the three independent variables are significantly correlated with one another.  This means it is possible that one or more of the zero-order correlations displayed in Table 1 is spurious.  We speculated that the association between rape supportive attitudes and pornography is spurious, an artifact of pornography exposure being jointly correlated with rape attitudes and patriarchal attitudes.  To test this, we computed two regression equations, shown in Table 2.  In the first equation (Model 1) we simply regressed rape supportive attitudes on pornography exposure.    With only one independent variable in the regression, the standardized coefficient (Beta) is identical to the zero-order correlation reported previously.  The value of .242 indicates a moderate relationship between the two variables, that accounts for about six percent of the variance in rape supportive attitudes.

 

Table 2.  OLS Regression: Rape Supportive Attitudes Regressed on Porn Use, Patriarchal Ideology, and Feminist Identity (Men)