A new study in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality finds that men who spend a lot of time on the Internet are much more likely to click on sexually explicit spam, unsolicited email, and pop-ups advertising sex sites.

Psychologists at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph in Ontario used a sample of 482 Canadian male and female university students, exploring their reactions to sexually explicit Internet material.

Overall, the men had more positive attitudes towards online sexual content than women, and were more likely to explore unsolicited emails and pop-ups. In fact, the results "suggest that males were very receptive to receiving this kind of material," the authors say.

The researchers not only probed the study subjects' attitudes to sexually explicit material online; they also asked them about their Internet-use behaviour.

Those who used their computers for a variety of purposes, such as writing email, using the Internet, or downloading music or other files, were more likely to have positive attitudes towards unsolicited sexual pop-ups and junk male messages.

They also found that men were more likely than females to actively search for sexually explicit materials online.

"In both attitudes and behaviour, then, males were more likely than females to endorse sexually explicit materials encountered online," the authors write.

But the biggest predictor of those who were most likely to look at online sexual content was not their reported attitudes towards it or even their gender, but the actual number of hours spent online, the researchers found. Those who spent the most time surfing were also most likely to seek out this material.

"This result may be a function of greater opportunity," the authors write. "Specifically, the more time users spend online, the greater the opportunity to encounter sexually explicit either accidentally or intentionally."

Computer experience was also an important predictor of positive attitudes toward sexually explicit material.

Specifically, more experienced computer users, those who more frequently use their computers for lots of different applications, rather than just, for example, to write email, were more receptive towards the sexually explicit material and more likely to seek it out.

The authors speculate that those who spend a lot of time online or have a lot of computer experience are more likely to have repeated exposure to sexually explicit material. Over time, they may become desensitized to the content. This, in turn, may make them curious enough to explore the sites further, the authors suggest.

Study authors Amanda Nosko and Eileen Wood say the most interesting finding from the study was that women showed little interest in online sexual content.

They had been eager to determine whether women, who traditionally have been reticent to access sexual content in XXX video stores or theatres would access it online, where their privacy was better assured. But they found that wasn't the case.

"We found that having access to this material online is not really changing the picture," Wood told CTV.ca.

"Women just don't like it. It doesn't matter what the medium is. And it's not because it's not there for them. They can have a look if they choose to, but they don't want to. And that's very interesting."

The authors didn't investigate why women were less likely to surf online sex sites, but the researchers believe they have a theory.

"Based on past literature on this topic, in general, women tend to find this material quite degrading and offensive. So we think that might still be the issue," Wood says.