The VR Porn Experience: What Your Brain is Like on VR Porn
People often resist change, especially if they’re comfortable and satisfied with the status quo. As the old saying goes, if it’s not broke, why fix it? If you’re enjoying porn on your laptop or smartphone, why bother with virtual reality? Research, however, suggests that VR porn may produce a more positive experience than traditional consumption through a screen.
While VR companies often focus on less erotic media, pornography is one of the most profitable and reliable segments of virtual reality. VR is still a niche segment of the entertainment industry, and in some instances, it’s a bit of a gimmick. That’s not because virtual reality itself is a gimmick, but instead because the companies creating VR are stilling discovering where and how it adds value.
Some early VR experiments will ultimately flop, but virtual reality porn is proving to be a reliable revenue stream and is enjoying high consumption? Why? Because virtual reality adds a lot of value, excitement, and enjoyment to the VR industry.
Your Brain on VR Porn
Our brains react to stimulus, including movies, video games, traditional porn, and yes, virtual reality porn. No matter the media, the end is typically the same: stimulating our brain in pleasurable ways. This is true for smartphones, PCs, and virtual reality, such as Oculus.
Badoink VR, a leading virtual reality production company, teamed up with Neurons, a research firm based in Denmark, to study how VR porn impacts the brain. While the initial study was limited in scope, the discoveries are quite promising for the industry.
First, the virtual elephant in the room: only five men, between the ages of 18 and 45, participated in the experiment, a rather small sample size. Each man watched an eight-minute porn on a flat screen and had their brain activity measured throughout viewing.
After that, the men cooled down with distractions until their brain activity returned to normal. Then, they watched the same video again, but this time used virtual reality. Through both viewings, the men’s motivation, arousal, and boredom levels were measured.
The end results are interesting, to say the least. First, viewers had an increased cognitive load throughout the VR viewing, meaning they had to work a bit more to process information. Yet for both PC and VR, the cognitive load fell in the sweet spot, meaning they were neither overloaded nor bored. VR never reached stressful levels, and the increased engagement could be a positive.
At the same time, motivation during VR viewing increased substantially. Keep in mind, viewers had already seen the video in 2-D, so were familiar with it. Arousal levels were roughly the same, but this result isn’t particularly surprising. For many viewers, the first watch will be more arousing since it’s a new experience. This is speculation, but the fact that VR delivered a similar level of arousal on a second viewing is a potentially encouraging result.
Take Away: VR Porn Has a Bright Future
Interestingly, many of the participants had not used VR before. Yet they quickly adapted to the technology and enjoyed it without being overwhelmed. For now, the above research was more of a pilot study with a limited sample size. Still, VR and VR porn will continue to evolve and advance. Likewise, researchers will take deeper dives into VR porn and its impact on the brain.
Porn isn’t a topic many people want to share around the dinner table. Yet it is a media that many, many people enjoy. And porn will play a major role in the virtual reality industry as it evolves and expands. And future research will probably prove that VR porn is a pleasurable, low-stress media that people can and will enjoy.
