The effect of movie viewing on memory

Research by German psychologists from the University of Duisburg-Essen has shown that people who are prone to watching pornography have a risk of losing working or short-term memory, which can seriously affect their lives.

The experiment included 28 average men with an average age of 26. Volunteers were shown images of both pornographic and non-sexual nature, such as people in various situations: laughing, playing sports, holding weapons.

While viewing, subjects had to indicate whether the current image was the same as the one from four slides ago by pressing yes or no buttons.

When viewing pornographic content, men were much more likely to make mistakes than when viewing non-sexual images, notes medportal.ru.

Thus, in the case of pornographic materials correct answers were given on average in 67% of cases, while when viewing other images this percentage was 80%.

Psychologists believe that the negative effect is associated with the appearance of sexual excitement, which affects cognitive processes.

"Sexual arousal interferes with the normal functioning of working memory," quotes study author Christian Layer.