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Weekly UpdatesCategories of the cognitive responses showed a pattern of varied comments around the same themes: gender role and sexual presentations. Twenty-five (6.2%) respondents made one comment about females in a sexist manner, revealing their own negative biases about female gender roles, while 32 (8%) made one comment about advertisers' use of females as sexist. Another 27 (7%) made more than one comment, up to 10, in this regard. Thus, a total of 65 (16% of the sample) offered at least one criticism of an ad's use of sexism. At least one comment about objectification of an ad model came from 14 (4%) of the respondents.
Turning to the hypotheses, H1 predicted females would generate more total cognitive responses than males. Results showed females made more total comments than males, with the female mean number of responses .66 comments and the male mean .21 (t = 3.89, p < .001).
Hypothesis 2, predicting males would produce more comments about attractiveness of models in ads, was not supported, although the means for comments about attractiveness of models were in the direction of the prediction (males' M = 4.77; females' M = 3.54).
Findings were supportive for H3, also lending information to answer RQ3. Beer ads elicited more cognitive responses critical of gender role/sexism and sexual portrayals than non-beer ads. The mean number for such comments to beer ads was .36, while the mean for non-beer ads was .03 (t = 6.51, p < .001). There were no differences in this pattern by gender.
The test of H4, that females would generate more comments about sexist and sexual content appearing in beer ads than males, proved statistically significant. Females produced more comments than males, with means of .59 and .20, respectively (t = 3.77, p < .001).
Finally, H5 predicted the more traditional gender role and sexist beer ads would elicit more counterarguments than the non-beer ads. We found partial support for HS, looking within categories of types of ads. Here, to test the influence of more traditional gender role/sexist ads, the categories of traditional gender role/sexist and target audience were combined. Although not found in other contexts, for beer ads with sports content, more overall counterarguments resulted if the ads presented traditional gender roles, higher sexist or sexual imagery, and were targeted to males, compared to ads with less traditional gender roles, and low sexism or sexual content (F = 5.96, p < .05).
Discussion
The randomly selected television ads studied here, presented during prime-time sports and entertainment television, deliver an abundance of negative stereotypic images of females for adolescents to think about. This is demonstrated by the advertising content and its link to adolescent audience members, who appear to be thinking about these concerns, among others, while viewing the ads.
Most of the advertisements in this study were found to target males, with almost none targeted specifically to females. However, many images of females appear in these ads, and these images are not always favored by female or male viewers. Comments about the unnecessary display of nudity, especially the female body, were common. Perhaps both females and males saw gender roles in television ads that are no longer as ubiquitous in the culture at large, thus questioning why these ads are not a closer reflection of the reality of their age group. As one male asked, "Where are all these girls who look like this [the way the females looked in the ad]?"
Most of the images focus on desirable lifestyles and many are sexual in nature. It is with sexual imagery and background decoration that females become important in these ads. Although the beer ads are found to be targeted to people across age groups, the beer ads with sports content were found to target younger viewers. In addition, nearly all of these ads with beer and sports images, and most of the beer ads without sports content, featured traditional gender role/sexist female presentations.
Clearly, adolescents make relatively neutral comments about male images in advertising. However, most comments about females tend to be critical with regard to gender roles and sexuality. This confirms intuition, as well as documented analyses, showing that beer ads as more varied in their male imagery, with females in rather limited, narrow, and negative background roles.
The finding that greater counterarguing occurred for beer ads with sports content suggests these ads might offer the most extreme in gender content that adolescents attend to and criticize. Not only were youth found to be the dominant target for a lot of beer ads, those with sports content in particular. However, they were found to be struck by the presence of females in the ads, making comments about their attractiveness, often within a sexual context. These "adult," forbidden, even illegal, activities may greatly interest young people, but lend criticism to adults who create and distribute the messages, particularly in an era where risky sex can be quite dangerous. As argued by Ward (1995), prime-time television contains common themes of sexuality in the television fare adolescents view most. These constructed scripts establish norms and expectations about sex. Ward (1995) adds that the young television viewers eagerly consume this information, likely not getting it from other more realistic and trusted sources.
The reactions in this study suggest self-socialization and gender schema processes are evident. Thought-listing persuasion research shows a tendency to criticize ad claims, focusing on products and their use (Slater & Rouner, 2002). Tapping thoughts directed toward relevant gender based, as well as sexual, social roles suggests the teens in this study were reading messages most relevant to them. A noted amount of commentary on the social observations most salient to their age group emerged. They focused on appropriate female presentations, consistent with the notion females must emphasize their images, they must be more attentive to message cues that help them with what is most important in their socialization stage appearance and mating behaviors. Males may not have perceived as much need to attend to their appearance, or to alter their appearance. It is possible males view this activity as an endeavor more suitable for females at this time.
Some respondents commented in derogatory fashion about females in the ads, using sexist language, deriding the models in the ads. More, however, criticized the advertisers for presenting negative stereotypes about gender roles. Respondents also criticized the objectification of models. For beer ads in a sports context, greater counterarguments resulted if the ads presented gender roles/sexism and more sex. This means some of the respondents are actively challenging these pervasive negative images, possibly a result of expectations about sexual and sexist imagery in beer ads during sports programs.
Females showed a greater tendency to focus more on gender roles and to criticize ads. This lends some support for Meyers-Levy's (1989) interpretation of females processing more breadth of information. Female ad images are more limited, with more negative sexual presentations. It could be that young women, for whom sex and mating are more salient at this time, feel more comfortable discussing these issues. The males might use more heuristic cues and process less information. Males might simply be more efficient, as they have seen much of the information previously. Males also may be less interested in these images, especially during sports programming. However, as gender schema theory would predict, males still freely comment on sexual imagery in ads, and our results suggest males tend to comment more about model attractiveness (with models more likely female than male). From the adolescent male standpoint, if comments about gender are generated, and this was found to be less the case for males than for females, comments were likely to focus less on gender role concerns and more on attractiveness or sexual images. In addition to their focus on gender roles, females showed the strongest counterarguing behavior. Thus, females may pay greater attention to the ad's central content than males. Males may be more vulnerable to the ad's persuasive effects, particularly if they are processing ad content in a low-involved state (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; Perloff, 1993). Males might be demonstrating lower involvement in ad product claims, paying attention to more peripheral information, like the physical characteristics of ad models. However, it is arguable that the central content of lifestyle ads is the social role behavior of the models, including gender roles.
It is clear that females and males freely challenged the ads, but not just about the product claims or technical characteristics. These results are encouraging if we are trying to educate young people to be media literate and to challenge advertising claims and content. It is also important that, although many of the thoughts generated in the thought-listing procedure were not about gender role and sexuality, several important comments were. This suggests an active role on the part of the audience members, for whom the advertisers are attempting to persuade about products, brands, and services. The teens are self-socializers, guided by their gender schemas, and they are in control of what content they are attending, how they're evaluating it, and any behavior that results. In addition, the audience members are addressing content that might be relatively peripheral and not under as strict surveillance by the industry as the more central content. And their attention might be on negative aspects of the ads, not on how they might use the product or service. Advertisers might benefit from paying more attention to this criticism in ad planning and execution.
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