Award Date

8-15-2025

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

First Committee Member

Shane Kraus

Second Committee Member

Kris Gunawan

Third Committee Member

Marta Meana

Fourth Committee Member

Jennifer Vanderlaan

Number of Pages

111

Abstract

The impacts of purity culture have been documented in the prevalence of abstinence-only sex education, perception of personal value tied to virginity, and shame and guilt related to sexual behavior. Similarly, models of moral incongruence often examine religiosity as a contributor of distress related to sexual behavior and pornography use, likely tapping into the influence of purity culture without directly naming its presence. This distinction is crucial due to the variety of religious beliefs and practices, some including purity culture and those without sexually restrictive beliefs and practices. Despite this, standardized measures for researching purity culture are limited. Ortiz (2018) created the Purity Culture Beliefs Scale (PCBS) to assess purity culture beliefs and further this area of research; however, this scale has received limited psychometric examination and mainstream utilization thus far. In my dissertation project, I performed both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with the PCBS. This allowed me to assess the factor structure of the PCBS in a United States census-matched sample, providing replication and validation of the measure in diverse samples. Additionally, I assessed group differences (i.e., gender, sexual orientation, race) in PCBS scores and conducted path analyses to examine associations among religiosity, purity culture, and pornography use. By examining both problematic pornography use (PPU) and perceived PPU in path analyses with purity culture beliefs as a potential mediating or moderating component, I assessed the factors contributing to moral incongruence (i.e., discriminating the distinct influences of religiosity and purity culture). Factor analyses showed improvement in item loading and cumulative variance in a 9-item, 2 factor version of the PCBS. Path analysis results indicated that purity culture beliefs consistently had a stronger relationship to the pornography outcomes compared to religiosity, supporting this more precise method of assessing moral incongruence through purity culture rather than religiosity. Research findings will help inform researchers and clinicians of the impact of purity culture beliefs on PPU as well as the suitability of the PCBS for assessing purity culture beliefs in a representative sample of United States adults.

Keywords

Pornography; Religion

Disciplines

Clinical Psychology | Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Gender and Sexuality | Religion

File Format

pdf

File Size

1345 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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