Mobile Edition
Print
Get the Mag
Weekly UpdatesYoung females are socialized to think of themselves as sexual, focusing on sexualized gender role images (Brown, White, & Nikopoulou, 1993). This likely carries over into self-socialization with the salience of nurturing relationships during puberty. In addition, females are believed to be more comprehensive processors, assimilating more information and engaging in greater elaboration, compared to males (Meyers-Levy, 1989; Meyers-Levy & Maheswaran, 1991; Meyers-Levy & Sternthal, 1991). Males are found to be less comprehensive than females, and to use more heuristics involving limited cues, which implies they make single inferences, compared to females (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973).
Some evidence suggests that females generally respond more favorably to advertising (Hallahan, 1995). However, younger, highly educated, and modern women are more critical of women's role portrayals in ads (Belkaoui & Belkaoui, 1976; Leigh et al., 1987). Given that females tend to elaborate more when processing information, this study tests the following hypothesis:
H1 : Females will generate more total cognitive responses on the subjects of gender role and sexuality than males to television advertisements.
While females might compare themselves to models and focus inwardly on the self, considering their own appearance and gender role presentations, males, given their stage of socialization and their inclination to activate traditional gender role schemas, might focus on the physical appearance of attractive or provocative female models in beer advertisements. They are not as concerned as females with how males and females are interacting, what people are wearing, their hairstyles, etc. Therefore:
H2: Males will generate more comments than females about models' attractiveness in television ads.
Further, few studies have focused on adolescents and alcohol advertisements, where there is a great deal of sexuality and nudity (Krupka & Vener, 1992). Alcohol is the most frequently advertised beverage in televised sports (Madden & Grube, 1994), and is highly popular among adolescent males. Adolescents have also been found to incorrectly perceive the age of models in beer advertisements as not only underage, but close to their own age (Slater et al., 1996). Children and adolescents demonstrate a liking for alcohol ads (Aitken, Leathar, & Scott, 1988). Atkin, Hocking, and Block (1984) have linked attention to beer ads and drinking behavior, including preference for advertised brands.
Female adolescents have been found to generate more negative comments and criticisms that challenge beer ads' content and presentation, compared to male adolescents (Slater et al., 1997). On the other hand, non-beer ads generated more favorable and less critical responses from females than males (Slater et al., 1997). Males responded more favorably than females to sports images in beer ads, while females responded less favorably to any ad embedded in sport programming. For males, this was found to be the reverse (Slater et al., 1997). Males may be using sports shows and ads with sports content for important information about social roles--i.e., what it means to be male-gendered. Adolescent females' negative reception of beer ads (Slater et al., 1997) suggests they may find fault in gender role and sexual portrayals in beer advertising, more so than non-beer advertising. Therefore:
H3: Beer advertisements will generate more cognitive responses that are critical of gender role and sexual portrayals than non-beer advertisements among females.
Because beer ads, given their male orientation, may demonstrate an extreme amount of sexual and gender role content, males also may be more critical of gender role and sexual portrayals in beer ads, compared to non-beer ads. Therefore, we pose the research question:
RQ3: Do males generate more cognitive responses that are critical of gender role and sexual portrayals in response to beer vs. non-beer advertisements?
Beer ads are a rich source of gender role and sexual images, thus information relevant to gender schema. One's perceived gender role has a strong influence on one's evaluations of persuasive messages (Jaffe, 1991 ; Leigh et al., 1987). Therefore, we predict some socialization-based differences between males and females. Although adult females and males have been found to criticize sexism in advertising, females have been shown to be more critical (Lysonski & Pollay, 1990) and to pay attention to and more frequently evaluate images of males over images of females (Baker & Churchill, 1977). Thus, in their socialization phase they are more likely to actively find fault and criticism for female images, as they will find those images to be more commonly sexual and limiting in gender role, or sexist. They have also been found to dislike nudity and sexual imagery (Bello et al., 1983). Hence:
H4: Females will generate more critical comments about content portraying limited gender roles (including but not exclusive to sexual content) appearing in beer advertisements, compared to males.
Another type of cognitive response found in the advertising literature (Slater et al., 1997) is the counterargument, which is a statement that refutes, challenges, or criticizes the veracity, reality, or reasonability of a claim in the advertisement. Examples might be, "That is crazy. It could never occur in real life," or "This ad's claim is completely false." Traditional gender role and sexual beer ads, including those with sports content, might be the most likely venue for counterarguments, criticizing ads' accuracy, product claims, formal features, actors, the brewery industry, and more. Males may pay less attention to ads in sports contexts than females, given that males are much more attuned to the predominately male gender relevant cues occurring in a sports show. However, males might prefer the male activities of ads with sports content. Given the above arguments for gender differences in the viewing of beer ads, we expect females to generate more counterarguments than males. Therefore:
H5: The more traditional gendered and sexist beer ads, with and without sports content in them, will elicit more counterarguments compared to other ads, from females than males.
Method
This study consists of a content analysis of 72 televised beer advertisements and a secondary analysis of cognitive responses from 401 adolescents who commented on the content-analyzed ads embedded in television sports or entertainment programming (Slater et al., 1997). The data used in this analysis have neither been coded nor analyzed before for sexual and gender role content. However, results of more general reactions, including counterarguing about products advertised, are reported in previous research (Slater et al., 1997).
Design
A total of 24 beer ads, 24 beer ads with sports content, and 24 non-beer ads (a total of 72 ads) were selected from prime-time network broadcast and ESPN cable television to ensure a sufficient number of beer ads in the study. A stratified sampling technique was employed, as each advertisement from one season of live football and entertainment programs was included in the initial sample. There were no duplicate ads. We taped two randomly-selected prime-time entertainment programs per week during a 6-week period during one prime-time season, as well as taping 12 sports programs (football and basketball), rotating between networks and randomly selecting start points from which to identify qualifying programs. The entertainment programs were sampled from half-hour prime-time shows that included nine situation comedies and three action-type programs. Advertisements were randomly selected from 30-second ads appearing on the sample programs. A beer ad was defined as having sports content if there were at least 8 seconds showing some kinds of sport activity. Non-sport ads showed no such activity. A few ads (e.g., denture cream) were excluded as being clearly irrelevant to adolescents (see Slater, et al., 1996 for more details on sampling procedures). The advertisements were common to prime-time television entertainment and sports programming, including commercials for beer, soda, shampoo, airlines, cars, clothing, and computers. Examples are the Budweiser frog advertisement featuring frogs croaking on a raft in a pond, and a Pepsi ad featuring supermodel Cindy Crawford drinking a bottle of Pepsi while two male adolescents watch, fascinated. The programs were standard popular situation comedies and football and basketball games that respondents may have viewed previously. The order of presentation of ads and programs was counterbalanced using a Latin-square template.
Participants
Students were recruited from public schools in a Western mid-sized city. The study population included 185 Anglo males, 116 Anglo females, 42 Latino males, and 42 Latino females. Junior high school students comprised 55% (average age = 13.3 years, SD = .77) and senior high school students comprised 45% (average age = 16.6 years, SD = 1.16) of the sample. Students were recruited via flyer and classroom announcements, with $6 incentives for junior high and $10 for senior high school students. Clearly, therefore, the study sample was self-selecting. However, school administrators who reviewed participant lists found a wide cross section of students in terms of academic preparedness, social behavior, and socio-economic backgrounds. Therefore the sample, while not random, appears to include a wide and reasonably representative range of students from this largely Anglo, mostly middle-income, community. In most cases, data collection took place in the schools during free or lunch periods, or after school hours. Several weeks were spent in each school to maximize opportunities for interested youth to participate.
FEED