Research by TRF

The Reward Foundation

The team at The Reward Foundation is involved in research with partners in the UK and the USA. We work closely with neuroscience experts at top universities and with addiction experts in clinical settings. Here is some original research we have published. It is all in peer-reviewed journals.

Problematic Pornography Use

Mary Sharpe and Darryl Mead were invited by the editors of the Springer journal Current Addiction Reports to write Problematic Pornography Use: Legal and Health Policy Considerations. We explore new ideas for understanding how Problematic Pornography Use can contribute to sexual violence against women and children. The article offers guidance to governments on possible health policy interventions and legal actions to prevent the development of PPU and to reduce the incidence of sexual violence in society.

ICBA papers

In June 2019 TRF presented at the 6th International Conference on Behavioural Addictions in Yokohama, Japan. We delivered two joint papers in the section Hypersexual behavior and other excessive behaviors. Mary Sharpe spoke on The challenges of teaching school pupils about the research on behavioural addictions. Darryl Mead offered Aligning the “Manifesto for a European Research Network into Problematic Usage of the Internet with the Diverse Needs of the Professional and Consumer Communities Affected by Problematic Usage of Pornography. It sets out TRF’s suggestions for the research needed over the next decade. This paper has now been published in a peer-reviewed journal. An in-depth story on the paper is here.

Our 2018 paper was Pornography and Sexuality Research Papers at the 5th International Conference on Behavioral Addictions. This conference was held in Cologne, Germany in April 2018. The paper was published in Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity online on 18 March 2019. We can provide a link to the published version by sending an email to [email protected]. A draft copy of the manuscript is available from ResearchGate.

The conference report from Cologne cited our first presentation in this field. It was Communicating the science of cybersex addiction to wider audiences.

This paper built upon Pornography and Sexuality Research Papers at the 4th International Conference on Behavioral Addictions. It was published in Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity online on 13 September 2017.  It appeared in print in Volume 24, Number 3, 2017.  More details including a review and the abstract are available on the TRF Blog. If you would like a copy of this article, please write to us through Get in Touch at the bottom of this page.

Internet Flow Model and Sexual Offending

Mary Sharpe, The Reward Foundation’s Chief Executive Officer,  has co-authored a chapter with Steve Davies of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation. It is called “The Internet Flow Model and Sexual Offending”. The chapter appeared in Working with Individuals who have Committed Sexual Offences: A Guide for Practitioners.  This was published by Routledge in February 2017 and can be purchased here.  You can also read about it by clicking on the button below:

Dr Darryl Mead, the Chair of The Reward Foundation published a paper on “The Risks Young People Face as Porn Consumers”.   This was published in Addicta: The Turkish Journal of Addictions in late 2016 and the full text is available for free.

Gary Wilson

In August 2016, Gary Wilson, the honorary research officer to The Reward Foundation, co-authored a paper with 7 US Navy doctors and psychiatrists  that was published in the journal “Behavioral Sciences”: Is Internet Pornography Causing Sexual Dysfunctions? A Review with Clinical Reports” is freely available from the Behavioral Sciences website. This is the most popular paper ever published in Behavioral Sciences and you can read it by clicking on the button below:

Gary Wilson has also written a key paper setting the direction for future research in the pornography harm field.  It is “Eliminate Chronic Internet Pornography Use to Reveal Its Effects” and was published in Addicta, The Turkish Journal of Addictions, in 2016. The link provides free access to the full study.