(ORDO NEWS) — What makes people spend their time watching porn and looking for promiscuity, even while married? According to psychologists, this is a sense of the meaninglessness of life – a person tries to drown it out with primitive hedonism.
Researchers from the University of Limerick (Ireland) and the University of Essex (England) have found a link between addiction to pornography and existential boredom that occurs in a person due to the lack of meaning in life.
The search for new sexual sensations is a way to emotionally avoid unpleasant thoughts and feelings, psychologists write in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.
Scientists obtained such results as a result of testing 179 adult residents of Ireland and the UK. People who agreed with statements like “My life has no clear purpose” were more likely to admit that they find it difficult to find something to do in most situations. In such situations, pornography became a good way to distract from problems and give life a novelty.
The new work expands on previous research by the same team of scientists. It showed that people suffering from a sense of the meaninglessness of life suppress it with the help of promiscuity. The base for the study was 890 people of both sexes, among whom were married, in relationships and bachelors.
It turned out that the presence of a partner did not play a special role: even in marriage or a serious relationship, existential boredom pushed people to look for casual connections. At the same time, bored people more often showed a tendency to look for something interesting in every person they met.
Approximately the same results were obtained by American scientists who studied 290 married couples (580 people) in 2009.
According to these data, even when having regular sex, people turn to pornography to escape the everyday feeling of emptiness in life. In the same place, psychologists give a more specific definition of existential boredom.
According to them, it occurs when the usual ways to spend free time do not bring the desired psychosocial results. That is, when a person sees that his activities do not change his life for the better and do not help him achieve his goals. Efforts seem to go nowhere.
In such cases, people resort to the maximum use of the most primitive ways to drown their brain in endorphins, dopamine and other “pleasure hormones”.
Among these ways: promiscuity, passion for pornography and masturbation, overeating, the use of psychoactive substances, extreme sports, anti-social acts. However, existential boredom does not always push people into dangerous, harmful, or socially stigmatized behavior.
It can encourage a person to go in for sports, outdoor activities, and search for new friends. The goal of future research is to explore why people resort to such different ways of solving the same problem.
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