While correlation does not prove causation, and it therefore cannot be concluded from these studies that it was the consumption of the pornography that was responsible for the males' higher acceptance of violence against women, their findings are consistent with a theory that a causal connection exists. If the rape rate was very low in the United States, or if it had declined over the past few decades, such findings would probably be cited to support the view that pornography does not play a causative role in rape. He has, however, conducted experiments that show that the level of aggression of male subjects toward females increases after they have been exposed to violent pornography in which a female rape victim was portrayed as becoming aroused by the end of the movie. When Donnerstein used violent pornography in which the victim was portrayed as being distressed by the sexual assault throughout the movie, the levels of aggression of male subjects toward females became increased only when they had first been angered by a confederate of the experimenter before seeing the movie. This interpretation is consistent with my causal model's emphasis on the important role pornographic depictions play in undermining males' inhibitions against acting out hostile behavior toward women.
Many psychologists reject the use of attitudes as a basis for predicting behavior.
Similarly, some people question whether Malamuth's measure of males' self-reported likelihood to rape has any meaningful relationship with their rape behavior. Hence, Malamuth's experiment to test whether males' attitudes and sexual arousal to depictions of rape can predict non-sexual aggression in the laboratory is of particular interest. A week after, measuring male subjects' attitudes and sexual arousal to rape, they were angered by a female confederate of the experimenter. Both Donnerstein and Malamuth emphasize that their findings on the relationship between pornography and aggression toward women relate to aggressive or violent, not to non-violent, pornography. When no measurable effects result, it would be wrong, because of this methodological problem, to interpret the experiments as proving that there are no effects in general.