Forbidden Thoughts

Running head: FORBIDDEN THOUGHTS

Forbidden Thoughts:
A Natural Experiment on Effects of Increased Media Exposure

Owen R. Temple1, Katherine J. Williams2, and James W. Pennebaker3

University of Wisconsin Madison1
University of California Los Angeles2
The University of Texas at Austin3

Correspondence should be addressed to James W. Pennebaker, Department of Psychology

A8000, 1 University Station, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712 (email:
Pennebaker@mail.utexas.edu).

Forbidden Thoughts
Running head: FORBIDDEN THOUGHTS

Forbidden Thoughts:
A Natural Experiment on Effects of Increased Media Exposure

Forbidden Thoughts

Abstract
Over the last two decades, the rate of media exposure to sex and aggression has increased
dramatically. Adolescents use of the Internet has also provided new outlets for seeing sexual
and violent images. For almost two decades, one of the authors has taught Introductory
Psychology in the Fall semester. Prior to a personality lecture, students have been asked to write
their most secret and forbidden thought. The responses of 2,418 students were coded by
gender and year. Overall, 63% were sexual in content and 11% were aggressive. Contrary to
predictions made by cognitive accessibility models, psychodynamic perspectives, or habituation
models, most sexual and aggressive themes have not changed over time. Although sexual
themes were used at higher rates among females and violence themes were more common among
males, the magnitude of sex differences was modest. Results are discussed in terms of advances
in social and evolutionary psychology.

Keywords: forbidden thoughts, media exposure, sex, aggression

Forbidden Thoughts

In recent years, there has been an increase in adolescents exposure to sexual images due
to the Internet (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2001; Mitchell, Finkelhor, & Wolak, 2003). The
content of television programming has also become increasingly sexual (Kunkel et al., 2005) and
violent (National Television Violence Study, 1998). To the degree that this exposure to sexual
and violent images is increased, do adolescents and young adults now think about sex and
violence more, less, or the same as in years past?
Different theoretical perspectives suggest different effects of this cultural phenomenon on
thoughts about sex and violence. The cognitive accessibility approach argues that exposure to
images increases their cognitive accessibility, which subsequently increases thoughts about the
subject (Wenzlaff & Wegner, 2000). Thus, a view of this cultural change from a cognitive
accessibility perspective would predict that after increased exposure to sexual and violent
images, individuals would think about the images more and might be more likely to mention
such content in forbidden thoughts. A psychodynamic approach, on the other hand, might predict
that exposure to sexual and aggressive imagery satisfies fundamental human drives or needs
(Freud, 1923/1960). In contrast to the cognitive accessibility prediction, a psychoanalytic
perspective might argue that exposure to these images could reduce the degree to which people
thought about sexual or aggressive themes and might reduce the likelihood of such content
appearing in forbidden thoughts. Similarly, habituation arguments arising from learning theory
and exposure therapy would also suggest that repeated exposure to sexual and violent imagery
could reduce their impact over time (e.g., Foa & Kozak, 1986).
The current study represents a serendipitous naturalistic test of the effect of increased
exposure to sex and violence on the content of individuals private thoughts. Over the last two

Forbidden Thoughts

decades, one author has taught large (100-500 person) sections of Introduction to Psychology
each year. Beginning in the late 1980s, he developed a class demonstration prior to a lecture on
Freud and personality. At the beginning of the class, students were asked to write down their
most secret and forbidden thought along with their sex. At the end of the class, a random
selection of secret thoughts was read aloud to demonstrate that people were indeed still interested
in sex and violence.
The period since the first year of the class exercise to the present has coincided with an
increase in adolescents exposure to sexual and violent material. Increases in access to the
Internet (and its sexual content) and increases in the sexual and violent content of television
provide two routes to this increased exposure. In the last decade, access to and use of the Internet
by adolescents and young adults has increased dramatically (Rainie & Horrigan, 2005; U.S.
Department of Commerce, 2002). U.S. Census data show that of all children and adolescents
aged 6 to 17, 25% had access to the Internet at home in 1997, 36% were online in 2000, 64%
were connected at home in 2001, and 67% in 2003 (1997; 2000; 2001; 2003). Of young adults
between the ages of 18-24, 82% had internet access in 2004 (Pew Internet & American Life
Project, 2005).
When they do access the Internet, 70% of adolescents occasionally view sexual images
and content (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2001), though often accidentally or involuntarily
(Mitchell et al., 2003). Even Internet searches with nonsexual terms occasionally produce
pornographic content (Youth, pornography, and the Internet, 2002).
As access to the Internet has increased, the content of television programs has also
become more violent and sexual. Violent subject matter increased on prime time television

Forbidden Thoughts

through the late 1990s, such that in 1996, 1997, and 1998, the percentage of programs featuring
violence was 53%, 63%, and 67%, respectively (National Television Violence Study, 1998).
The sexual content of television programs also increased from the late 1980s through the
late 1990s (Kunkel, Cope, & Colvin, 1996) and from 1998 through 2005 (Kunkel et al., 2005).
Kunkel et al. found that in 1998, 2002, and 2005, the percentage of television shows containing
sexual content was 56%, 64%, and 70%, respectively, and the number of sexual scenes per hour
increased from 3.2 in 1998, to 4.4 in 2002, to 5.0 in 2005. The net result of more sex scenes per
hour and more shows containing sexual content was a doubling of the frequency of scenes with
sexual content on TV in 2005 compared to 1998.
Moreover, during the period that televisions content changed, it appears that television
viewing did not decline in importance in peoples lives. In 2004, television viewing among 8 to
18 year olds exceeded 3 hours a day, and, despite growing competition from the Internet and
other media sources, television viewing remains the most used media source for most
adolescents (Roberts, Foehr & Rideout, 2005).
In the context of increased exposure to sexual and violent content, individuals private
thoughts might have changed, though different theoretical perspectives suggest different kinds of
change. The present study seeks to answer three questions: What are the basic themes of secret
and forbidden thoughts? Are there changes over time in the nature of secret and forbidden
thoughts? Are there gender differences in secret and forbidden thoughts?
Method
Participants
The participants in this study were 2418 (1050 female, 784 male, and 584 unknown)
undergraduate students from Introductory Psychology courses taught in the Fall semester at two

Forbidden Thoughts

schools in Texas (M age = 18.1 years). The sample was comprised of 627 students from
Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas (231 women, 192 men, 204 unspecified), and
1791 students from the University of Texas (UT) at Austin (819 women, 592 men, and 380
unspecified). For participants whose sex was not designated, predictions of sex were generated
by a coder blind to predictions. The accuracy of sex predictions was assessed using the
following procedure. A coder was given 116 randomly selected forbidden thought statements
with sex of the author removed. The coder was asked to guess the sex of each author by use of
handwriting, topic, or other information available. Overall, the coder was unable to guess the
sex of the author for 15 statements. For the remaining 101, the coder accurately guessed author
sex with 92.1% accuracy. Once reliability was established, the same coder estimated the 584
writing samples with no sex designation. Of the individuals whose sex was unknown, 241 were
predicted to be female, 205 were predicted to be male, and 138 were not predicted. Note that
separate analyses with gender excluding all cases where gender was unknown yielded identical
patterns of means.
Procedure
The students from SMU participated in the study in the years of 1988 through the fall of
1996. The UT students participated from 1997 through 2004.
At the beginning of a class period, before the general topic was announced, the instructor
gave the students the following instructions:
Take out a piece of paper and on it write down your most secret or forbidden thought,
along with your gender. Do not include your name or any other identifying information.
Do not let anyone else see what you have written. As soon as you have written down your
secret or forbidden thought, fold the paper, and pass it to the front.

Forbidden Thoughts

The thoughts were collected over 16 years and were coded for content in the summer of 2004
and the winter of 2005.
Coding
The responses were transcribed onto a spreadsheet and were initially coded for sexual
content, aggressive content, or other. Sexual content included any mention of sexual relations,
attraction, or sexuality. Aggressive content included thoughts that mentioned harm or intent to
harm others. Statements mentioning sexual violence were coded as both sexual and aggressive.
Subsequently, the thoughts were coded in greater detail across 38 specific dimensions.
Thoughts with sexual content were coded for the characteristics of thoughts, including:
heterosexual, homosexual, single partner, multiple partners, love or marriage, betrayal,
environment, masturbation or pornography, public nudity, perverse (including incest, sexual
content involving animals, and sadistic content), other sexual, and like or attraction. Aggressive
thoughts were coded across more specific dimensions, as well. Aggression dimensions included:
murder, suicide, property destruction, intentional harm, hate or lack of caring, and death. All
thoughts referencing sexual aggression were coded as either victim or perpetrator of sexual
aggression.
Each thought was coded for the relationship between the participant and the other
individual(s) involved, regardless of the content type of the thought. Those thoughts that did not
include other people were not coded for these particular dimensions. The categories for other
involved individuals included: family, celebrity, authority, sexual partner, ex-partner,
acquaintance or friend, other specified person, unspecified person, or animal. All thoughts were
also coded for references to aspects of the participant, including: self-concept, mental illness,
drugs, guilt, school, religion, power, and money. Content was also coded for other aspects of the

Forbidden Thoughts

participant, including: wont tell secret thought, dont have secret thought, or other
unclassifiable. See Table I for coding dimensions and examples.
Once the categories were established, two independent coders assigned each thought to
the applicable categories. Raters initially trained by coding random samples of 100 responses
four separate times. After each rating trial, the two raters compared coding decisions and reached
agreement on discrepant classifications. This process resulted in consistent ratings of content:
Cohens kappa for raters coding on classification was 0.92 for sex and sexuality and 0.78 for
aggression. The average kappa across all coded variables was 0.80 and median kappa was 0.83.
Three additional factors informed the expected results of the study. First, if increased
access to sexual content on the Internet affected the nature of sexual and aggressive forbidden
thoughts, we would expect, based on previously reported changes in Internet access (e.g., U.S.
Census Bureau, 1997; 2000; 2001; 2003), that the influence of the Internet would be observed
from the mid-1990s through the early 2004. Second, regarding the impact of television, the
years of the late 1980s, the decade of the 1990s, and the first four years of the 2000s were all
marked by changes in the sexual and violent content of programming (e.g., Kunkel et al., 1996;
Kunkel et al., 2005; National Television Violence Study, 1998), so we might also expect changes
in forbidden thoughts across all the study years. Third, and finally, we assumed that any causal
effect of exposure on the content of forbidden thoughts would be dose-dependent, so both
individual year data and long term trends would be important to consider.
Data Analysis
Multiple and linear regression tests of slope, performed both on the individual year values
and three-year moving-average values, were predicted to detect both small scale and large scale
changes in the nature of thoughts over time. To account for autocorrelation in moving averages,

Forbidden Thoughts

Newey-West estimators of standard errors (Newey & West, 1994) were used in linear
regressions of the three-year moving averages.
Results
To discover the common themes in secret and forbidden thoughts, the percentage of
males and females who reported thoughts in each content category were calculated. The most
frequently mentioned themes were sex and sexuality (63% of all thoughts reported), aggression
(11% of thoughts reported), and self-esteem (10% of all thoughts reported). Multiple regressions
focused on main effects of gender, year, and the gender by year interactions for each of the
content coding categories. Table II displays the mean percentage of each gender that reported
thoughts in a given content category and whether significant effects for gender or year were
found. Effect sizes are also presented including Cohens d for gender differences and in terms of
semi-partial correlations, r, for effects of year.
Significant associations with year emerged in several categories, though the effects were
small in magnitude. These associations suggested that the more recent the year of the study, the
more forbidden thoughts contained reports of sex and sexuality, ( = .080, p < 0.001), sex with
an acquaintance or friend ( = 0.072, p = 0.001), sex with an authority figure ( = 0.065, p =
0.002), and stated feelings of attraction for someone ( = 0.060, p = 0.004). Similar effects
suggest possible declines over time, such that, the more recent the year, the less frequent were
mentions of aggressing ( = -0.061, p = 0.004), aggressing against unidentified or anonymous
person ( = -0.087, p < 0.001), killing an unidentified or anonymous person ( = -0.057, p =
0.007), images of death ( = -0.070, p = 0.001), power ( = -0.055, p = 0.008), and money ( = 0.069, p = 0.001).

Forbidden Thoughts 10
The line that resulted from regression of reports of sex and sexuality on year (with gender
included in the model) showed a small positive slope over the years of the study, = 0.080, B =
0.008, t(2276) = 3.856, p = 0.001, 95% C.I. of B = (0.004, 0.012). The line that resulted from
regressing the proportion of individuals reporting aggression on year (with gender included in
the model) revealed a small negative slope over the years of the study, = -0.061, B = -0.003,
t(2276) = -2.909, p = 0.004, 95% C.I. of B = (-0.006, -0.001). Again, these associations in the
time series regressions for sex and aggression should be interpreted with caution as their effect
sizes are small (semi-partial r for sex was 0.08 and -0.06 for aggression), and, moreover, they
may have been unduly influenced by an aberrant pattern of responses in the first year of the
study.
In order to assess more conservatively the long term trend of reports of sex and
aggression in the forbidden thoughts over time, we created three-year moving averages of the
proportion of responses including sex and sexuality and three-year moving averages of the
proportion of responses including aggression. Figure 1 illustrates the three-year moving
averages of the percentage of individuals reporting sex and sexuality and aggression in forbidden
thoughts over the study period. This graph shows flat trend lines for reports of sexuality and
aggression in forbidden thoughts over time.
Moving average linear regressions were performed using Newey-West estimators to
correct for autocorrelation in the times series. A test of the slope of the rate of increase/decrease
in the proportion of individuals reporting sex and sexuality over three-year moving averages of
years of the study, for both genders combined, revealed no evidence of an increased or decreased
slope, = 0.067, B = 0.001, t(9) = 0.22, p = 0.828, 95% confidence interval (CI) for B = (-0.008,
0.009). Similarly, there was no evidence of an increased or decreased slope for reports of sex

Forbidden Thoughts 11
and sexuality in men, = 0.139, B = 0.002, t(9) = 0.44, p = 0.674, 95% CI for B = (-0.007,
0.011), or in women, = 0.098, B = 0.001, t(9) = -0.37, p = 0.719, 95% CI for B = (-0.005,
0.007). In a test for an increase or decrease in reports of aggression in forbidden thoughts, with
both genders combined, we found that year did not predict mentions of aggression, = 0.143, B
= 0.001, t(9) = 0.34, p = 0.743, 95% CI for B = (-0.005, 0.007). Similarly, we found no
evidence of increased or decreased reports of aggression in forbidden thoughts of either men or
women.
Gender differences in secret and forbidden thoughts were also found. Table II
summarizes the mean percentage of individuals reporting given content by gender and highlights
significant differences and corresponding effect sizes (presented as Cohens d for gender
differences). Men were significantly more likely than women to report forbidden thoughts
involving sex with multiple partners, sex with an animal, sexual perversion, forcing another into
sex, aggressing against someone, aggressing against unidentified or anonymous person, killing
someone, killing an unidentified or anonymous person, and unclassifiable statements. Women
were significantly more likely than men to report forbidden thoughts involving sex and sexuality
in general, sex with a single partner, sex with a boyfriend or girlfriend, sex with an acquaintance
or friend, love or marriage, sexual betrayal involving someone else, sexual betrayal involving an
ex, sexual betrayal involving an identified target who is not labeled an acquaintance, sex in an
exotic environment, being forced into sex, and aggressing against an acquaintance or friend.
Most of the gender difference effect sizes in terms of d were small to medium (with higher
female rates as negative numbers). Mentions of multiple partners revealed the largest gender
difference effect size of 0.37 and mentions of sex with a boyfriend or girlfriend were the next
largest at -0.22.

Forbidden Thoughts 12
A gender by year interaction was found for thoughts of love and marriage such that
mens reports of thoughts involving love and marriage tended to increase over the study period
while womens reports of thoughts of love and marriage tended to decrease.
Discussion
The most striking result of this investigation is the high frequency of reports of sex and
aggression in forbidden thoughts of the young adults in this study. 63% of all responses
revolved around sex and sexuality, and 11% of thoughts contained aggressive themes. However,
despite the high prevalence of sex and aggression in these thoughts, in these data spanning nearly
two decades, when media exposure to sexual and violent content via the Internet and television
was increasing dramatically, we found little to no effect of this exposure on rates of sexual and
aggressive thoughts. In this natural experiment, it appears that increased media exposure to
sexual and violent content through the late 1990s to 2004 may not have significantly increased or
decreased the likelihood that a young adults forbidden thoughts would involve sex or
aggression.
Although there was minimal evidence for a slight increase in sexual thoughts and a
decrease in aggressive thoughts, the pattern of effects were not generally supportive of the idea
that changes in exposure to the media brought about wholesale changes in forbidden thoughts.
Given that exposure to sexual and aggressive content through media has increased dramatically
in recent years, these findings are not well explained by predictions that might be formulated
from psychoanalytic, cognitive accessibility, and learning perspectives.
Interestingly, gender differences in the content of secret and forbidden thoughts were also
measured in this study. In our sample over the study period, women were significantly more

Forbidden Thoughts 13
likely than men to report thoughts involving sex and sexuality. Within this umbrella category of
sex and sexuality, however, other gender differences were observed.
Men were more likely to report thoughts about sex with multiple partners, while women
were more likely than men to have thoughts of sex with a single other partner, thoughts of sex
with a boyfriend or girlfriend, and thoughts of love and marriage. This pattern of findings seems
to correspond with results of a meta-analysis of gender differences in sexual attitudes and
behaviors that showed that men view increased number of partners and casual sex more
favorably than women (Oliver & Hyde, 1993). Oliver and Hyde point out that several theoretical
perspectives predict that women will be inclined to have fewer sexual partners and view
uncommitted sex less favorably, including neoanalytic theories (Chodorow, 1978), sociobiology
or evolutionary psychology (e.g., Schmitt, 2005; Symons 1979, 1987), social learning theory
(e.g., Bandura, 1977; Mischel, 1966), social role theory (e.g., Eagly, 1987), and script theory
(e.g., Gagnon & Simon, 1973, Mosher & Tomkins, 1988). However, our study provides
evidence that one gender or the other was more or less likely to mention a sexual behavior in
forbidden thoughts and cannot provide evidence that a given behavior is more or less acceptable
to a particular gender.
Women in our study were also somewhat more likely than men to have forbidden
thoughts of sexual betrayal, defined as sexual activity with someone that is kept secret to a
potentially disapproving third party (e.g., another friend, family member, or partner). The notion
of a sexual double standard, and recent changes in this cultural norm (Sprecher, McKinney, &
Orbuch, 1987), may be useful for explaining this finding. The sexual double standard dictates
that women are more negatively evaluated than men for participating in casual sex outside a
committed relationship (Sprecher et al., 1987). Womens greater tendency to mention

Forbidden Thoughts 14
disapproving third parties in sexual activities in this study may reflect the greater salience of this
double standard and sensitivity to violation of its proscriptions among women. Greater salience
of a norm violation for a particular gender might logically account for its overrepresentation in
forbidden thoughts for that gender. Specifically, in our study, women were more likely than
men to report sexual betrayals in general, sexual betrayals involving an ex, and sexual betrayals
involving a specific individual whose relationship to the respondent was uncertain.
Regarding aggressive content of thoughts, men were more likely than women to have
thoughts of aggression and killing in general. This finding of increased aggressive thoughts in
men relative to women corresponds with evidence that men have a greater tendency for
aggressive behavior at all ages (Archer, 2004). Additionally, higher reported thoughts of killing
in men corresponds with evidence that men are more likely than women to actually kill (Buss,
2005). On the other hand, consistent with reports that women may be more relationally
aggressive within their own friendships than men (Grotpeter & Crick, 1996), women in this
study were more likely than men to report thoughts of aggression against friends and
acquaintances.
As interesting as many of these differences are, psychologists in the reporting of gender
differences must be careful not to perpetuate myths about large fundamental differences between
men and women (see Hyde, 2005 for more on this important topic). Therefore, we reiterate that
our effect sizes for categories with gender differences were small to medium, with Cohens d
between 0.11 (for aggression) and 0.37 (for sex with multiple partners). Indeed, one is struck by
the remarkable similarities between genders in most of the categories of forbidden thoughts as
much as by the differences.

Forbidden Thoughts 15
Regarding trends in forbidden thoughts over time, the exact nature of the association
between increasing media exposure to sex and violence and content of secret and forbidden
thoughts in young adults remains unclear. Other factors in society have changed over the study
years that could have influenced the sexual and violent content of secret thoughts. Though the
lack of correspondence between changes in media and content of forbidden thoughts in this study
is notable, the relationship between these variables needs to be tested in controlled experiments
in order to determine whether media exposure to sex and violence increases, decreases, or is
unrelated to thoughts of sex and violence in adolescents and young adults.
A project such as this is fraught with potential shortcomings in terms of its sample,
methodology, and basic assumptions. The students were not randomly selected and reflected
upper middle class college students most of whom were in their first semester. There is no
independent evidence indicating how and to what degree the students were exposed to sexual
and/or violent images. It is also unknown the degree to which the instructions to write down
your most secret or forbidden thought prior to a lecture on psychodynamic theories may have
primed sexual and aggressive thoughts irrespective of media influences. Similarly, some of
these findings may be based on an interesting tautological assumption. That is, in our culture,
terms like secret and forbidden may implicitly refer to sexual and aggressive themes.
Despite these inherent problems, the project documents surprisingly high and temporally
stable levels of sexual and aggressive content in the secret, forbidden thoughts of young adults
and also sheds light on interesting gender differences in these private, frequently undisclosed
cognitions. At the very least, the current study demonstrates that the secret and forbidden
thoughts of sex and aggression that were so central to Freuds theorizing continue to be striking
features of the human mind.

Forbidden Thoughts 16
Table I
Category

Dimension

Content Coding Dimensions and Examples

Example

Sexual Content

Sometimes I wonder if Im attracted to girls

Aggressive Content

I want to kill my ex-boyfriend and his home wrecker girlfriend

Sexual Characteristics
Heterosexual

Bubbles, candles, honey, Stephen (F)

Homosexual

I want to kiss a girl (F)

Single sexual partner

That I want to have sex with a girl from my hometown

Multiple sexual partner

Mass orgy and I am the only guy

Love/marriage

I know who I want to marry

Betrayal

I want to have sex with my best friend's boyfriend

Environment

Having sex in the rain on a sailboat

Masturbation/pornography

My roommate spanks his monkey

Public nudity

Having hardcore sex in the rain in front of an audience

Perverse

To have sex with a monkey

Other sexual content

Yes its sexual!

Like/attraction

I have a crush on a guy named Brendon

Murder

I would like to short all homosexuals and most minorities

Suicide

My most secret thought would be that of suicide

Property destruction

Burn down school

Intentional harm

I was beaten as a kid

Hate, lack of caring

I resent my father for leaving when I was a baby

Death

I hope a lot of people come to my funeral

Victim

To be totally controlled by a man in sexual activity

Perpetrator

What would it be like to rape a girl?

Family

I kissed my brother

Celebrity

To have sex with LL Cool J

Authority/elder

I want to make out with Professor Pennebaker

Partner/spouse

I think the guy Im dating is the one Ill marry

Ex-partner

To do it with Jason my ex-boyfriend

Acquaintance/friend

Had sex with one of my boyfriends best friends

Other specified person

Have you know with the girl to my left

Unspecified person

Kill someone

Animal

I shot my dog

Concept

Fear of failure

Mental illness

The fear of being a manic depressant

Drugs

To try peyote with a wild group of Indians

Guilt

I stole something when I was 10 and I feel really bad about it

to try peyote with a wild group of Indians
Id love to quit college

Aggressive Characteristics

Sexual Aggression

Others Involved

Self

School

to try peyote with a wild group of Indians

Forbidden Thoughts 17
Religion

God does not exist

Power

To be queen of Wall Street

Money

I think about stealing a whole lot of money

Wont tell

You read these for laughs, dont you?

Dont have

I dont have one

Other

Where I hide my diary

Other

Forbidden Thoughts 18
Table II
Forbidden Thought Content Categories and Mean Reported Levels by Gender

Forbidden Thought Content Category

Sex and Sexuality
Heterosexual sex
Homosexual sex
Sex with animal
Sex with single partner
Sex with multiple partners
Sex with family member
Sex with celebrity
Sex with authority figure
Sex with boyfriend / girlfriend
Sex with ex-boyfriend / ex-girlfriend
Sex with acquaintance or friend
Sex with an identified target who is not acquaintance
Sex with an unidentified or anonymous person
Love or marriage
Sexual betrayal of someone else
Sexual betrayal of family member
Sexual betrayal of boyfriend / girlfriend
Sexual betrayal of ex-boyfriend / ex-girlfriend
Sexual betrayal of acquaintance or friend
Sexual betrayal with an identified target who is not
acquaintance
Sex in an exotic environment
Masturbation or pornography
Sex in public view / exhibitionism
Sexual perversion
Other sexual content
Attraction
Being forced into sex
Forcing another into sex
Aggression
Aggressing against family member
Aggressing against celebrity
Aggressing against authority figure
Aggressing against boyfriend / girlfriend
Aggressing against ex-boyfriend / ex-girlfriend
Aggressing against acquaintance or friend
Aggressing against identified target who is not acquaintance
Aggressing against unidentified or anonymous person
Killing
Killing self
Killing family member
Killing celebrity or authority figure
Killing ex-boyfriend, ex-girlfriend, acquaintance or friend
Killing identified target who is not acquaintance
Killing unidentified or anonymous person
Beating up or harming
Hating
Stealing or destroying property
Death images

Significant
Effects
(G = Gender,
Y = Year,
GxY=
Gender x Year
Interaction)
(p < .01)
G, Y

Effect Size
of
Significant
Gender
Differences
(Cohens d)
(Greater
female =
negative)
-0.15

G
G
G

0.14
-0.17
0.37

Y
G

-0.22

G, Y

-0.17

G, G x Y
G

-0.19
-0.14

-0.12

-0.12

Effect size
of
Significant
Year
Effects
(r, semipartial
correlations)
0.08

Males
(Mean %
reporting
content)
60.8
32.9
5.3
1.6
21.1
14.1
2.2
4.9
5.5
3.9
1.5
7.0
3.3
27.1
3.9
6.4
0.3
0.5
0.1
2.4
0.0

Females
(Mean %
reporting
content)
68.2
31.4
5.0
0.4
28.5
4.1
1.9
3.8
6.3
9.3
2.6
12.2
4.1
24.2
8.5
10.2
0.4
1.1
0.8
3.8
1.2

6.6
1.3
3.1
6.0
7.7
4.4
0.3
1.2

10.0
1.1
3.9
3.6
8.1
6.0
1.2
0.2

-0.13

0.12

Y
G
G

-0.11
0.12

13.3
1.1
0.3
1.2
0.1
0.3
0.9
0.5
5.7
7.6
0.9
0.7
1.1
0.7
0.2
3.9
1.9
2.6
2.4
1.3

9.7
1.5
0.0
0.4
0.0
0.2
2.3
0.4
3.2
3.9
0.9
0.5
0.3
1.1
0.2
1.5
1.9
3.3
1.3
1.6

G, Y

0.11

-0.11

G, Y
G

0.12
0.16

-0.09

G, Y

0.16

-0.06

0.07
0.07

0.06

-0.06

-0.07

Forbidden Thoughts 19
Self
Self-esteem (high or low)
Mental illness or distress
Using drugs
Feeling guilty
School
Religious belief
Possessing power
Money and materialism
Other
Won't tell
Don't have one
Other unclassifiable statement

18.5
9.3
0.8
1.7
0.2
2.5
1.0
4.2
2.2

18.9
11.4
1.3
1.1
0.5
2.3
0.9
3.1
2.5

Y
Y

2.5
2.8
8.0

1.8
3.6
5.3

-0.06
-0.07

0.11

Forbidden Thoughts 20
Figure Caption
Figure 1. Three-year moving averages of the mean percentage of individuals reporting sexual
and aggressive content in Forbidden Thoughts over time.

Forbidden Thoughts 21

Forbidden Thoughts 22
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