This is What Happens When You Watch Porn: Coolidge Effect
One of the most addictive factors of porn is the Novelty aspect
The user can scroll through pages and pages of arousing images and videos.
They can have multiple tabs open.
They can fast forward to the peak of each video.
And they can do this endlessly if so desired.
Just think about the unhealthy amounts of dopamine that are surging through the brain during such activity.
However, the main issue with novelty goes much deeper and can be further elucidated by the Coolidge Effect.
THE COOLIDGE EFFECT
“Here’s how the Coolidge Effect works: The rat’s reward circuitry is squirting less and less dopamine with respect to the current female, but produces a big dopamine surge for a new female. Does that sound familiar?
“Not surprisingly, rats and humans aren’t that different when it comes to response to novel sexual stimuli. For example, when Australian researchers displayed the same erotic film repeatedly, test subjects’ penises and subjective reports both revealed a progressive decrease in sexual arousal. The “same old same old” just gets boring. Habituation indicates declining dopamine.
After 18 viewings—just as the test subjects were nodding off—researchers introduced novel erotica for the 19th and 20th viewings. Bingo!
The subjects and their penises sprang to attention. (Yes, women showed similar effects.) Internet porn is especially enticing to the reward circuitry because novelty is always just a click away. It could be a novel “mate,” unusual scene, strange sexual act, or—you fill in the blank.”
The most detrimental result of the Coolidge Effect is its impact on relationships.
Often those who have been affected by an addiction to novelty cannot maintain healthy relationships and either end up going from relationship to relationship or find themselves perpetually single.
Driven to seek dopamine through novelty, this effect also creates higher levels of infidelity, preference for porn over human connection, and inability to reach climax with a non-novel partner.
Beyond relationships, wiring the brain in this way may also create symptoms of ADD and cause an inability to focus which can lead to dissatisfaction with anything that is not highly stimulating and a lack of pleasure in things that the user once enjoyed.
Oftentimes, those liberated from Novelty Addiction find that life has gone from black and white to high-definition color.
They gain a new sense of focus and clarity and find enjoyment in the simple pleasures they once loved.
They also report deeper and closer bonds to ones they love.
In fact, they often report an inability to experience what love actually feels like during porn use and now say they never knew that love could be so beautiful and fulfilling.
