How is online porn different from paper? Part 2: Understanding the Reward System
Image Credit: NeuroscienceNews.Com
To answer this question, I am going to ask another question: How is evolution involved in Pornography addiction?
Way back in time, our earliest evolutionary ancestors evolved a “Reward System” designed to keep our species alive.
Quintessential image from Space Odyssey 2001
What would have happened if our most distant ancestors had not remembered where to find food day after day? We wouldn’t exist!
The only species to effectively remember where to find food, water, and shelter, were the ones to survive and pass on genes and memories to a new generation.
How the reward system works: Neurons at the base of the brain give us a dose of dopamine when we do something to preserve our species. (Dopamine: The pathway to pleasure July 20, 2021 By Stephanie Watson, Harvard Women's Health Watch) The dose of dopamine is like a pat on the back from your brain that makes you want to repeat whatever you did, so our brain stores that information in the “DO THAT AGAIN!” folder. When our primitive ancestors found a novel source of food, our brains helped us remember what we did to find it. What about behaviors that helped us find new potential mates? Sure enough, the reward system kicked in to help them feel so accomplished, they would be sure to repeat that behavior. (Gary Wilson, Your Brain on Porn).
Unfortunately, the reward system can be hijacked by harmful substances and behaviors that trick our brain into thinking they are super important: Drugs, alcohol, social media, games, pornography. These are all stimulants that make us think we are doing extremely necessary things and get packed into the same “DO THAT AGAIN!” folder (Gary Wilson, Your Brain on Porn).
Back to the first question: pornography on paper vs. pornography online. How does the reward system come into play?
Paper pornography, or even videos you get from the porn store are a one-time deal. You get it, you see it, you are very aroused by it, and then the novelty wears off (thanks to the Coolidge effect I explained in a prior post), and you will never be excited to the same level as you were the first time you saw it. Novelty, or the Coolidge effect, is a key word/phrase to understand. When it comes to maximum species propagation effect, novel mates are extremely important. Our native impulse is: mate with as many potential (novel) mates as possible, thereby ensuring the survival of OUR specific genetic line.
Supernormal-stimulus: Bird caring for an extra large, but false, egg.
New term time: Supernormal-stimulus. A supernornmal-stimulus is a stimulus that occurs in such overpoweringly high amounts that it could not possibly be naturally occurring.
Enter high speed internet in 2006. Nothing is the same ever because of all. the. mates. You want novelty? You have endless novelty. Thanks to the Coolidge effect we learned about in part one, a “novel” partner is required for a male to physically be able to mate repeatedly in short periods of time. (Gary Wilson, Your Brain on Porn). Boom! Your genetic line is assured for millennia -thanks to all the digital mating.
(Actually, you have to mate in real life to preserve your genetic line).
Add in the endless variety of porn genres, the ability to have multiple videos running all at once, and you have a perfect scenario for never running out of new mates, new stimulus, more, more more! A new type of supernormal-stimulus is born: high-speed internet porn that paper porn could never live up to.
