A new study from researchers at the Brigham Young University claims to have established a causal connection between watching pornography and behaving unethically. The study, published in the Journal of Business Ethics, claims that employees who watch porn are at risk of hurting their employers: “Combined, our results suggest that choosing to consume pornography causes individuals to behave less ethically,” wrote the co-authors. “Because unethical employee behavior has been linked to numerous negative organization outcomes including fraud, collusion, and other self-serving behaviors, our results have implications for most societal organizations.”

Dire-sounding headlines quickly proliferated around the internet, shrieking, “Viewing pornography increases unethical behavior at work” and “Watching pornography in office increases unethical behaviour.” Websites no one has ever heard of, like Medical Daily, breathlessly reported, “The team said porn was also associated to a 163 percent increase in shirking work and lying. Porn also encouraged some participants to view others as objects or less than human, which contributed to unethical behavior at work.”

But at YNOT, we’d like to invite everybody to take a deep breath and settle down. From where we’re sitting, it doesn’t look like you’re going to start defrauding your boss or “dehumanizing” your coworkers just because you watch some fapping fodder.

First of all, the researchers didn’t actually have their 1,000 survey respondents or their 200 experiment participants watch any porn. Instead, “one group was tasked with recalling and recording their last experience viewing pornography” before they were given a hypothetical ethical dilemma to consider. We’d hardly call the twenty-one percent of those folks who were then willing to lie about watching a boring 10-minute video afterward proof that porn makes people into filthy cheating liars.

Secondly, we’d like to point out that this study came from the Brigham Young University, an institution which espouses the idea that magical underpants can turn people away from sin. And, while we’re sure it’s put out some solid studies in its long history, the study co-authors just might be a little biased against porn use. Study co-author Melissa Lewis-Western, for instance,a professor of accountancy, was quoted saying, “If you have a societal phenomenon that a lot of people are participating in and it negatively impacts individuals’ decisions, that has the potential to impact organizational-level outcomes.” Sounds to us like she knew what she wanted when she started this study, and good science be damned.

Study stock photo by Dumitru Ionut