BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Moral incongruence involves disapproval of a behavior in which people engage despite their moral beliefs. Although considerable research has been conducted on how moral incongruence relates to pornography use, potential roles for moral incongruence in other putative behavioral addictions have not been investigated. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of moral incongruence in self-perceived addiction to: (i) pornography; (ii) internet addiction; (iii) social networking; and (iv) online gaming.
DESIGN: A cross-sectional, preregistered, online survey using multivariable regression.
SETTING: Online study conducted in Poland.
PARTICIPANTS: 1036 Polish adults aged between 18 and 69 years.
MEASUREMENTS: Measures included self-perceived behavioral addiction to pornography, internet use, social networking and online gaming and their hypothesized determinants (moral incongruence, frequency of use, time of use, religiosity, age and gender).
FINDINGS: Higher moral incongruence (β = 0.20, P < 0.001) and higher religiosity (β = 0.08, P < 0.05) were independently associated with higher self-perceived addiction to pornography. Additionally, frequency of pornography use was the strongest of the analyzed predictors (β = 0.43, P < 0.001). A similar, positive relationship between high moral incongruence and self-perceived addiction was also present for internet (β = 0.16, P < 0.001), social networking (β = 0.18, P < 0.001) and gaming addictions (β = 0.16, P < 0.001). Religiosity was uniquely, although weakly, connected to pornography addiction, but not to other types of addictive behaviors.
CONCLUSIONS: Moral incongruence may be positively associated with self-perception of behavioral addictions including not only pornography viewing, but also internet use, social networking and online gaming.
