By: Michael Petersen
Recent studies presented at the Mormon Media Studies Symposium at Brigham Young University found that there are untapped resources to combat the dangers of pornography addiction.
Vauna Davis, communications director at Women for Decency and consultant for Utah Coalition Against Pornography, presented her pornography awareness study titled “Hooks, Traps and Minefields: The Persuasive Power of Anti-Pornography Messages in LDS Priesthood Conference Talks” to a crowd of 50 at BYU’s Conference Center.
“From 2006 to 2011 pornography was mentioned in all but one priesthood session,” Davis, of Provo, Utah, said. “This is a total of 12 talks.”
Davis’ study analyzed these talks to decipher how leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints warn and counsel against the perils of pornography. She found that leaders heavily used metaphors as a persuasive tool. Analysis found that metaphor-use created greater and longer-lasting attitudinal changes than other forms of persuasion.
Differing from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Davis discovered that other Christian congregations rarely use metaphors in their anti-pornography campaigns.
“They almost never use metaphors, but they use a lot of first-person experiences and statistics to make their case against pornography,” Davis said. “Those things are absent in these priesthood conference talks.”
Davis proposed various recommendations on how the Church should improve its anti-pornography strategies. She advised the use of more concrete instructions to resist the addictive material instead of the Church’s currently abstract counsel. Also, she suggested personal engagement with the issue.
“Attitude-accessibility research recommends that if people anticipate that they are responsible to talk about pornography they’ll think more about it,” Davis said. “(Elder M. Russell) Ballard made use of this concept. He suggested that fathers have talks with their sons on this issue. This effect could be used even more widely by recommending interaction such as teaching a family home evening on the subject.”
In the question-and-answer session after her presentation, Davis said women should get more involved in the teaching process. They are less susceptible to those temptations and actually see the children during the day so they are in a better teaching position, she said.
