There are all kinds of theories about what watching pornography might do to a person. Some of those theories are positive, some are less so. But there’s one thing that studies agree on: People are more likely to think watching porn will affect others negatively more than it will affect themselves negatively.

This is not, to be clear, saying that there are established negative effects associated with watching porn (that’s a whole other debate). It simply means that one person is more likely to assume that any negative effects that might exist apply far more to someone else, than to himself. The neighbor watching porn? A heathen. You watching porn? A regular Wednesday night. This is a well documented phenomenon in sex research, but recent work suggests that it doesn’t hold up for a particular type of pornography: instructional porn.

Yes, instructional porn really is just what it sounds like. According to Katrina L. Pariera, the George Washington University researcher behind this new study, “Instructional pornography includes explicit adult films designed to arouse and instruct couples or individuals in sexual matters,” she wrote in a recently published paper. This kind of porn has titles like The Expert Guide to Positions, The Ultimate Guide to Sexual Pleasure, and Tristan Taormino's Expert Guide To Advanced Fellatio. (Instructional pornography always seem to be either expert or ultimate.) These are how-to manuals, guides, roadmaps to pleasure, sex for dummies. And many of the free porn sites online like YouPorn and PornHub and XVideo have an instructional tag where these videos live.

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The usual perception of pornography being worse for someone else was flipped. People actually thought that viewing instructional porn had the same impact on adults (both men and women) as watching The Matrix did. Which is to say, no real effect. And, unlike non-instructional pornography, there was no difference in how men and women felt about it. (When asked about pornography more broadly, women tend to be more likely to perceive negative impacts than men are.) In other words, “instructional pornography was rated as having a mostly positive effect, suggesting the genre is perceived as somewhat socially desirable.”