Television sports and athlete sex: looking at the differences in watching male and female athletes.

Women's sports are slowly becoming more popular among audiences in the United States. Successful coverage of women's sports during such events as the Summer and Winter Olympics, as indicated by higher ratings, has been the impetus for television networks to increase the amount of women's sports they broadcast (Lopiano, 2000). Women's sports makes up approximately 5% of the total televised sports coverage (Tuggle, 1997). But this increase in the amount of coverage has been a relatively recent phenomenon; 1992 marked the first year that that total coverage of women's sports surpassed the total coverage of sports that featured animals such as horses and dogs (Lopiano, 2000).

Despite the fact that there is an increased amount of women's sports being telecast, there are inherent differences in the way the sports commentators speak about the female athletes, compared to their male counterparts (Halbert & Latimer, 1994; Messner, Duncan, & Jensen, 1993). There also are differences seen in the production techniques used in broadcasting each (Hallmark & Armstrong, 1999). While many researchers in the past have examined this differing content of comparable men's and women's sporting events, very little research has examined how these different portrayals may affect the members of the viewing audience. The purpose of this study is to examine how males and females differ in their cognitive and physiological processing of television sports that feature male and female athletes. The primary goal of this study was to test how sports broadcasts that differ in the sex of the participating athletes are physically reacted to and cognitively processed differently by male and female viewers.

Researchers have generated an extensive body of literature about the perceived inherent qualities of masculinity and femininity and how they contribute to the societal roles of men and women. These traditional ideas of what the inherent qualities of masculinity are include strength, self-control, aggression, stamina, discipline, fearlessness, and competitiveness (Koivula, 2001; Laberge & Albert, 1999). Therefore what is not masculine is therefore feminine; more specifically, the traditional qualities of femininity include beauty, passivity, grace, emotion, and expressiveness (Koivula, 2001; Laberge & Albert, 1999).

Individuals learn the qualities that are encompassed in the concepts of masculinity and femininity through personal experience (Calvert & Huston, 1987). Children, in particular, observe societal cues about what is acceptable behavior for men and women and use them to form expectations about what constitutes acceptable behavior for men and women (C. L. Martin & Ruble, 2004). This exposure to and personal experience with these cues instill beliefs about how men and women should feel in certain situations, what their general appearance should be, and what is appropriate behavior (Nathanson, Wilson, McGee, & Sebastian, 2002); these ideas about what is appropriate behavior often contribute to how an individual behaves due to a strong sex role identification and overall schema about how his or her own biological sex should behave (Bem, 1977, 1981 ; Spence, 1993). These exposures assist individuals in forming their own gender schemas, which affect the processing of future gender messages (C. L. Martin & Halverson Jr., 1981; Nathanson et al., 2002). Gender schema theory, then, allows for stereotyped attitudes to be reinforced when individuals view stereotyped portrayals of gender in society, including those portrayals seen on television and the media as well as exhibited in other individuals (Calvert & Huston, 1987; Nathanson et al.).

Television has the potential to assist in the forming and reinforcing of gender schema that incorporate stereotyped ideas about gender roles, possibly through implicit learning. Implicit learning allows for someone to "unconsciously" form a personal belief about an individual or a group of people without having any knowledge of where this belief was attained, or even that this knowledge was learned; the abstract information learned essentially becomes a rule within the individual's personal beliefs (Reber, 1967, 1989). The viewing of negative images of different social groups on television could possibly assist a viewer in the forming of abstract negative schemas about members of these groups without the conscious knowledge of where such beliefs were learned; past research, for example, has discussed the possible effect of implicit learning on beliefs about women following a brief exposure to photographs of women with varying lengths of hair (Squire, Knowlton, & Musen, 1993).

These stereotypical perceptions inherent to many individuals' gender schema are reinforced by what programming television networks choose to air. Televised sports are an arena where such reinforcing practices are evident. Televised women's sports tend to focus on athletes who participate individually and not with a team, as well as on sports that stress the charisma and grace of the athlete (Koivula, 2001). These are also the women's sports that tend to receive the most airtime, due to their focus on beauty and the overall attractiveness of the participant as well as the sport itself; these sports include gymnastics, synchronized swimming, and figure skating (Koivula, 2001; Laberge & Albert, 1999).

In contrast to female athletes, male athletes are believed to have personality characteristics not appropriate for women; these characteristics include "aggressiveness, competitive spirit, discipline, and stamina" (Koivula, 2001, p. 379). These personality characteristics are the ones believed to be inherent to masculine sports. Some of the sports that are believed to be masculine, and therefore not appropriate for female participants, include football, boxing, and wrestling (Koivula, 2001; Laberge & Albert, 1999).

These societal beliefs about what personality traits are appropriate for boys and girls are taught at an early age and are widely accepted with no actual evidence to support their validity (Holtzman, 2000). These stereotyped ideas are then reinforced, oftentimes through their unconscious assimilation through implicit learning during the viewing of television images, and can lead to an individual's increased belief of these gender roles (Reber, 1967, 1989). These beliefs of the differences between men and women, and in this context between masculine and feminine sports, are constructs of social reality that reinforce societal inequities between genders, which include the concepts of masculine dominance and feminine inferiority (Halbert & Latimer, 1994).

These ideas about men and women are a major component of social dominance orientation. Social dominance orientation, an individual difference variable within social dominance theory (Sidanius, 1993), is a personality measure that allows for an individual predilection toward a societal hierarchy (Bates & Heaven, 2001). In other words, individuals have a preference for the group to which they belong to be perceived at a higher level than and superior to other groups (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994). Groups that can be considered socially weak, including women and minorities, have a difficult time in attempting to overcome these perceived hierarchical structures. There are structures in place that reinforce these perceptions and contribute to their sustainment over time (Sidanius, Liu, Shaw, & Pratto, 1994). The media is considered one of these structures that, through their stereotypical portrayals of women, reinforce these patriarchal beliefs of society.

This bias in the coverage of women's sports has been shown to not be exclusive to any one sport. Evidence has been gathered of biased presentations in a wide array of sports and events: tennis (Billings, 2003; Halbert & Latimer, 1994); basketball (Eastman & Billings, 2001; Hallmark & Armstrong, 1999); golf (Billings, Angelini, & Eastman, 2005); soccer (Christopherson, Janning, & McConnell, 2002); and the Olympic Games (Billings & Eastman, 2002; Tuggle & Owen, 1999). As other professional women's sports become more mainstream in the media, such as ice hockey, boxing, and softball, it is possible that these gender stereotypes will come to apply to these sports and their athletes as well.

It is undeniable that the watching of television programs has some effect on the beliefs and attitudes of viewers. As briefly described previously, Gender Schema Theory examines how individuals, particularly children, form beliefs about the societal roles of men and women. Children's processing of information and behaviors pertaining to gender are influenced by their own mental representations of men and women, otherwise known as their gender schemas (C. L. Martin, Ruble, & Szkrybalo, 2002). These schema of gender are formed by seeing and processing repeated social cues from their immediate and mediated environments (C. L. Martin & Halverson Jr., 1981; Nathanson et al., 2002). These schemata are active representations of gender during which, once a child identifies himself or herself as a boy or a girl, he or she actively searches out more representations of gender in order to comprehend and meld into their schema of gender what qualities go into being a boy or a girl (C. L. Martin et al., 2002). Because children do not passively mimic these representations of gender but rather are also internalizing these depictions of gender into their own personal beliefs, the possibility of inaccuracies within their overall schema is even greater (C. L. Martin et al.). One of the sources from which children gather their cues about gender is television. Exposure to stereotyped messages about gender through a television broadcast, including through the viewing of a sporting event, can assist in the active formation of a gender schema that contains counterfactual information, and then has the possibility to reinforce these erroneous beliefs by continuing these stereotypical portrayals.

Social Dominance Theory can also come into play when sports-viewing choices are made. Male viewers will be more likely to choose sports featuring male athletes because these broadcasts reinforce the societal beliefs that men are more physically powerful and capable than women, therefore reinforcing the societal hierarchy of gender. Males are less likely to choose to watch sports featuring female athletes because by placing females in such an environment they are attempting to overcome the patriarchal power structure within society. On the other hand, women have been shown, without any reservation, to be more accepting of sports featuring female athletes (Nixon, Maresca, & Silverman, 1979). Under Social Dominance Theory, those in the minority group will latch on to and attempt to advance any phenomenon that will better their social standing. Female viewers who are motivated to choose to watch sports featuring female athletes over sports that feature male athletes appear to be attempting to improve their social position by endorsing females who are occupying traditional male roles.

This study investigates how much of the mediated message is remembered after exposure. As previously noted, physiological arousal evoked by a mediated message increases the resources allotted to encoding and storing the information of the message (A. Lang, Dhillon, & Dong, 1995; A. Lang, Newhagen, & Reeves, 1996). However, arousing messages may require so many resources for the encoding of the message that there may not be enough resources available for the necessary storage of the message content; this overloading of resources can result in insufficient storage of message content, which in turn will not make it possible for later retrieval (A. Lang, 2000). This overload may be elicited by content or structural features in the message that are designed to increase the viewers' physiological arousal and amount of cognitive effort given to the message (A. Lang, 2000).

Due to the stereotypical nature of much of sports programming, it may be a commonly held belief that women's sports are not as stimulating or arousing to watch as men's sports. However, as mentioned above, women are generally more accepting of sports featuring female athletes. In addition, as outlined above, social dominance theory allows for female viewers to choose and possibly even have greater emotional responses to such televised sports portrayals. Based on these possibilities this study predicts the following for self-reported arousal:

[H.sub.1]: Male study participants will self-report higher levels of arousal for men's sports than for women's sports

[H.sub.2]: Female study participants will self-report higher levels of arousal for women's sports than for men's sports.

However, the question then arose, would the viewing of men's and women's sports elicit the same differences in physiological arousal levels as it did for self-reported arousal levels? Though self-reported arousal ratings normally correlate with physiological arousal (Greenwald, Cook, & Lang, 1989), due to societal beliefs about the differences of gender, this typical relationship between self-report and physiological measures may not exist. These implicit beliefs about gender may cause a response bias during a participant's self-reporting of arousal; instead of reporting a level of arousal that is analogous to their physiological arousal, it is possible that individuals, particularly males, may self-report lower levels of arousal toward the viewing of women's sports. Thus, the following research questions are posed for this experiment:

[RQ.sub.1]: Will male study participants' self-reported levels of arousal correlate to the physiological levels of arousal generated during the viewing of women's sports clips?

[RQ.sub.2]: Will female study participants' self-reported levels of arousal correlate to the physiological levels of arousal generated during the viewing of men's sports clips?

Links between arousal and the amount of cognitive effort given to a message, as well as the encoding of the message, is demonstrated under the auspices of the limited capacity model of motivated mediated message processing; an increased level of arousal will cause an increased number of resources designated toward cognitive effort to the message and encoding the message's content (A. Lang, 2000). In conjunction with the predictions that men's sports will elicit higher levels of arousal among male study participants and that women's sports will elicit higher levels of arousal among female study participants, the following hypotheses about cognitive effort and encoding are proposed:

[H.sub.3]: An increased level of cognitive effort for men's sports, as indexed through heart rate, will occur in male study participants, as compared to women's sports.

[H.sub.4]: An increased level of cognitive effort for women's sports, as indexed through heart rate, will occur in female study participants, as compared to men's sports.

[H.sub.5]: An increased level of encoding for men's sports, as indexed through recognition, will occur in male study participants, as compared to women's sports.

[H.sub.6]: An increased level of encoding for women's sports, as indexed through recognition, will occur in female study participants, as compared to men's sports.

Methods

Design

The design of the experiment is a Subject Sex (2) X Athlete Sex (2) X Repetition (12) X Order of Presentation (4) mixed ANOVA design. Athlete Sex and Repetition were within study participants factors; Subject Sex and Order of Presentation were between subject factors. Both sex factors had two levels (male and female). The repetition factor represented the 12 clips within each Sex condition; clips from six different sports were used in each repetition. In order to control a possible order effect, four different orders of presentation were created. Each televised clip was presented in a different position and placed between differing clips in each of the four orders. Each subject was randomly assigned to one of the four orders. While analyzing the heart rate data there was also a Time factor which consisted of the ten 3-second increments during which each 30-second clip airs on the television screen.

Stimuli

Twenty-four, 30-second clips were recorded from off-air and cable television networks such as CBS, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classics, Fox Sports Midwest, Fox Sports World, PAX, and Superstation WGN for this experiment. Sports that were represented in the clips include basketball, tennis, gymnastics, soccer, softball/baseball, and figure skating. Clips were selected to not feature any teams from the university the study was held at and, if the sporting event was international, none featured the U.S. national team. In addition, if the female athlete version of a sport was taken from an international competition, such as Wimbledon for tennis, then the male athlete version of that sport was as well.

Participants

Undergraduate students that were enrolled in a telecommunications course at a large Midwestern university participated in this experiment. The total number of participants was 53 (28 female, 25 male). Upon arrival, participants were randomly assigned to one of four presentation orders. Due to computer or experimenter error, or due to early withdrawal at the discretion of the participant, complete data for all dependent measures was collected for 47 participants (23 female, 24 male). Though this sample size may seem small, the inferential statistics used to determine the differences between groups of individuals rather than between variables allows for a sample of this size (A. Lang, 1996).

Apparatus

During the experiment, all stimuli and questions were presented, via MediaLab software (Jarvis, 2004), on a 17-inch flat screen computer display. This same computer, also via MediaLab, asked all recognition and demographic questions.

The computer that the stimuli were presented on was connected directly to the Coulbourn general purpose port (GPP). At the commencement of each sports clip, MediaLab sent a TTL (Transistor Transistor Logic) signal through the computer's parallel port. This signal is routed into a digital port on the Coulbourn GPP after passing through a converter box. This signal was sent 5 seconds prior to the onset of the sports clip. As soon as it received this signal, the VPM computer program (Cook, 2003) knew to begin collecting physiological data.

Independent Variable

Athlete Sex. In this study the primary focus is the examination of self-report and physiological responses to televised sports, and how these responses differ when comparing the viewing of sports featuring male athletes and sports featuring female athletes. Twelve of the sports clips featured male athletes and 12 of the clips featured female athletes (two for each sport).

Dependent Variables

Arousal. Arousal was measured in two ways. First, self-reported arousal was measured through the use of a picture-oriented instrument called the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) (Bradley, Greenwald, Petry, & Lang, 1992; Bradley & Lang, 1994; P. J. Lang, 1980). SAM scales are robust instruments that have been repeatedly validated when used with a variety of stimuli, including still pictures (Bradley & Lang, 1994); audio (A. Lang, Schwartz, Lee, & Angelini, 2007); and video (A. Lang, Bolls, Potter, & Kawahara, 1999). The SAM scale for arousal ranges from an excited, wide-eyed figure with an explosion in its middle to a relaxed, sleepy figure. The subject can place a mark on any of the five figures, or between any two figures, resulting in a 9-point scale for this dimension of emotion. Ratings were scored such that a score of 9 represents a high arousal rating and a score of 1 represents a low arousal rating. The Self-Assessment Manikin was administered via MediaLab software to each of the study participants following each sports clip.

Measuring each subject's skin conductance responses also assessed physiological arousal. Skin conductance is a measure of activity in the sympathetic nervous system (Hopkins & Fletcher, 1994) and should correlate highly with self-reported arousal (Greenwald et al., 1989). Arousal measures tonic skin conductance levels during the viewing of each sports clip (Stern, Ray, & Quigley, 2001).

Skin conductance was analyzed in two ways: the frequency of spontaneous skin conductance responses during each message and the amplitude of the largest spontaneous skin conductance response during each message. Skin conductance has been utilized to measure physiological arousal to a variety of stimuli, including audio (A. Lang et al., 2007), and video (A. Lang et al., 1999).

Cognitive Effort. Heart rate (HR) was used as a measure of cognitive effort. Previous research has shown that a decrease in HR is an indicator of an increase in cognitive effort to television messages (A. Lang, 1990, 1994, 2000). Deceleration of heart rate that is maintained throughout the entire message denotes sustained mental effort on the part of the subject (A. Lang, 1994).

Participants' HR data was collected while watching the sports clips by placing three electrodes on the subject's arms: two electrodes put on each forearm and a third ground electrode placed above the wrist on the subject's nondominant arm. The gathering of electrocardiogram information was done with Beckman standard AG/AGCL surface electrodes filled with electrode gel (Discount Disposables, St. Albans, VT). A Coulbourn V75-04 bioamplifier was used to amplify the signal while a Coulbourn V21-10 dual comparator was set to detect a cardiac R-wave and output it into interbeat intervals.

Encoding. In order to assess encoding of the information in the messages, a forced-choice, four-alternative, multiple-choice recognition test was given after the viewing of the sports clips and a distraction task to each subject. The distraction task was unrelated to this study's focus, about political advertising, and was utilized in an effort to clear participants' short-term memory. There were three questions written per 30-second sports clip. All of the content of the questions were taken from the audio track of the sports clips shown. The test was administered on MediaLab software. In an attempt to control for subject fatigue effects, MediaLab created random orders of the 24 question sets; there was one question set per sports clip, with each set consisting of the three questions per message. Also, the three questions within each set were presented in a random order by MediaLab. Results presented are a percentage correct of the total questions.

Data Editing and Reduction

Interbeat intervals (IBI) were the measure used in the collection of heart rate data. IBI is the time measure, in milliseconds, between heart beats (I. Martin & Venables, 1980). This collected data is cleaned using the computer program VPMEVENT (Cook, 2003); VPMEVENT is a program intended to assist in the cleaning of physiological data that occurs at irregular intervals. VPMEVENT was programmed to allow for 500 to 1200 milliseconds as the typical duration of an IBI; typically this is an accurate measurement of an individual's resting heart rate that ranges between 50 to 100 beats per minute (A. Lang, 1990). VPMEVENT was programmed to transform the IBls into a weighted average beat per minute value, averaged into 3-second bins. During analysis of the heart rate data, if Mauchly's Test of Sphericity is violated, all significance levels are reported as results of Greenhouse-Geisser tests.

A sampling rate of 20 times per second was used for the collection of skin conductance data. The computer program VPMANLOG (Cook, 2003) was used to reduce the samples into the highest skin conductance level per second. Skin conductance responses (SCRs) are increases in the skin conductance level of a subject (Dawson, Schell, & Filion, 2000). The number of SCRs as well as the highest amplitude of any one SCR in each 30-second sports clip was scored. An increase in skin conductance that had an overall amplitude of .05 micro-Siemens or more was considered an SCR (Dawson et al., 2000); even though the standard set forth by Dawson et al. was used here, typically the minimum amplitude in micro-Siemens for what is considered an actual SCR is at the discretion of the experimenter (Stern et al., 2001).

Data from the recognition test was analyzed for response accuracy. An accurate response was coded as a "1" while an incorrect response was coded as a "0." Recognition scores were then calculated as a percentage correct.

Effect size for all significant ANOVA tests are reported as [[epsilon].sup.2], which is akin to, yet more conservative than, the adjusted [R.sup.2] (Keppel, 1982).

Results

The first two hypotheses made predictions about participants' self-reported levels of arousal. For Hypothesis 1 it was predicted that male participants would self-report higher levels of arousal for sports featuring male athletes than for sports featuring female athletes. Male participants did rate sports featuring male athletes (M = 4.70, SD = 1.10) more arousing than sports featuring female athletes (M = 4.07, SD = 1.37). Also, in performing an analysis of variance (ANOVA) on this data, athlete sex had a significant effect on male participants' self-reported arousal scores F(1,23) = 13.88, p = .001, [[epsilon].sup.2] = .35. Therefore, the hypothesis was supported. In contrast, while Hypothesis 2 predicted that female participants would self-report higher levels of arousal for sports featuring female athletes, they rated sports featuring female athletes (M = 4.21, SD = .94) as less arousing than sports that feature male athletes (M = 4.97, SD = .92). Though athlete sex did have a significant effect on female participants' self-reported arousal scores F(1, 22) = 15.99, p = .001, [[epsilon].sup.2] = .39, Hypothesis 2 could not be supported.

Continuing with an examination of arousal, the research questions inquired if participants' self-reported levels of arousal would correlate to their physiological levels of arousal during sports featuring athletes opposite of their own sex. Though these measures should correlate (Greenwald et al., 1989), here they did not for skin conductance frequency (r = .24, p = .25) or skin conductance amplitude (r = .12, p = .56) for male participants or for skin conductance frequency (r = -.05, p = .82) or skin conductance amplitude (r = -.17, p = .44) for female participants, even though the effect of athlete sex on physiological arousal was approaching significance for both frequency (p < .15) and amplitude (p < .15).

Hypothesis 3 stated that male study participants would give more cognitive effort, as indexed through heart rate, to sports featuring male athletes while Hypothesis 4 predicted that female study participants would give more cognitive effort to sports featuring female athletes. Statistical analyses show that there is a significant interaction of athlete sex on heart rate for male participants only, F(6, 138) = 2.75, p = .02, [[epsilon].sup.2]] = .06, and not for female participants, F(6, 132) = 1.64, p = .14. An examination of the graph of heart rate scores for male participants shows that the heart rate data partially supports this hypothesis. The graph shows that through the first half of the message, sports featuring male athletes and sports featuring female athletes appear to elicit the same level of cognitive effort (lines are parallel). At approximately the halfway point, a deceleration occurs while viewing sports featuring male athletes. See Figure 1. The polynomial trend contrasts performed on this data suggest that the pattern of deceleration of heart rate changes is significant between the two conditions, F(1,23) = 10.34, p = .004, [[epsilon].sup.2] = .28.

For Hypotheses 5 and 6 predictions were made about which content would be encoded better for male and female participants, as indexed through mean recognition scores. Hypothesis 5 predicted that male study participants would better encode sports featuring male athletes, while Hypothesis 6 predicted that female study participants would better encode female sports, as indexed through recognition scores. For Hypothesis 5, though the difference in the mean scores was significant, F(1, 23) = 9.42, p = .005, [[epsilon].sup.2] = .26, mean recognition scores show that male participants received better recognition scores for sports featuring female athletes (M = .51, SD = .10) than for sports featuring male athletes (M = .45, SD = .14). This held true for female participants in Hypothesis 6; female participants did significantly encode and recognize female sports (M = .48, SD = .09) better than male sports (M = .36, SD = .08), F(1, 22) = 24.55, p < .001, [[epsilon].sup.2] = .50.

Discussion

The primary purpose of this study was to examine how male viewers and female viewers differ in their physiological and cognitive processing of sports messages that feature either male athletes or female athletes. What came out of this experiment were some very interesting results. Though sports with male athletes elicited higher self-reported levels of arousal, physiological arousal did not tell the same story; heart rate decreased for all participants while viewing sports featuring female athletes, indicating more attentional resources were given to these messages and higher scores on the recognition questions from the sports with female athletes were achieved by all participants.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Sports that feature male athletes are the typical television fare. It is easy to see why when examined under the lens of social dominance orientation. Social dominance orientation, as reviewed earlier, is a personality variable that provides for an individual to have a personal preference for a social group to which they belong to be perceived as superior to other social groups (Pratto et al., 1994; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999); it also allows for groups that can be considered socially weak to have a difficult time in attempting to overcome these perceived societal hierarchical structures. Televised sports demonstrate and strengthen the societal division between men and women through their portrayals of male athletes and female athletes. Male athletes are shown as strong, disciplined, and competitive while female athletes are portrayed as emotional, graceful, and passive (Koivula, 2001; Laberge & Albert, 1999). Social dominance orientation seems to come through as a possible reason for response biases in the data for self-reported arousal.

It is also easy to see why television sports is dominated by male athletes given the self-report results reported here and the industry reliance on self-report data of viewer preferences. In reviewing the results for self-reported arousal, both male and female participants self-reported feeling more aroused while watching sports that featured male athletes; in fact, athlete sex had a significant effect on self-reported arousal scores for both segments of the participant population. What is interesting to note is that, even though self-reported arousal and skin conductance readings should somewhat correlate (Greenwald et al., 1989), in this study they did not. Though sports with male athletes garnered a significantly higher level of self-reported arousal than sports with female athletes, skin conductance responses showed that there were no significant differences in physiological arousal responses to the viewing of sports featuring male or female athletes. This finding may lend credence to the idea of a response bias; individuals have been taught to believe that sports with male athletes are inherently more exciting and arousing, therefore leading to higher self-report scores on their emotional arousal, while their physiological readings belie that possibility by demonstrating that the human body is similarly aroused by sports featuring male or female athletes.

The principles of social dominance orientation allow for such response biases to occur; male study participants report higher levels of arousal-while watching sports featuring male athletes than sports featuring female athletes in order to maintain their perceived social dominance over women. With male athletes constantly being portrayed as a superior group to female athletes, it is not surprising that male participants would report feeling more aroused while watching male athletes. The conceptualization of social dominance orientation asserts that members of a group perceived as superior would work toward continuing their superiority. In this study, male participants appear to agree with the accepted hierarchy and enjoy sports featuring male athletes because of their inherent membership in the "superior" group. At the same time, the self-reported arousal ratings by female participants for sports with female athletes were larger than that of male participants, though, which suggests that these women were attempting to break away from the accepted belief that male athletes are superior to female athletes. Social dominance orientation allows for members of the out-group to attempt to better their social standing (Sidanius, 1993; Wilson & Liu, 2003); though speculative, these results suggest that this is what is being attempted by the female viewers.

Research indicates that women do not adhere to the concepts behind social dominance orientation as stringently as men (Pratto, Stallworth, Sidanius, & Siers, 1997; Sidanius et al., 1994); in some cases men believe more in maintaining the hierarchical structure of society than women believe in the need for changing it. In the case of the current study, these women may subscribe to some of the same stereotypical societal ideas behind masculinity and femininity, which in turns lends itself to these perceptions of men's and women's participation in sports. These beliefs about acceptable roles in certain facets of society could feasibly explain the overall higher arousal ratings by female participants for sports with male athletes than for sports with female athletes.

A possible explanation for these differences in emotional and cognitive responses to sports that feature male and female athletes is the possible novelty effect of viewing female athletes. Sports with female athletes, as compared to sports with male athletes, are broadcast on television rather infrequently. Both male and female participants had a significant decrease in heart rate while watching sports with female athletes, more so than during male sports clips. Sports featuring female athletes were also recognized better by both male and female participants than sports featuring male athletes. Due to this ability to better recognize the content of the footage featuring female athletes, it is reasonable to conclude that an increased amount of resources were allocated toward the encoding of the message's content (A. Lang, 2000).

The introduction of new information or new items among existing information has been shown to be remembered better (Kishiyama & Yonelinas, 2003; Parker, Wilding, & Akerman, 1998). This novelty effect has been shown in research as having positive effects on free recall (Hunt, 1995) and recognition (Kishiyama & Yonelinas, 2003). With women's sports being such a small percentage of the total sports on television, particularly favorable portrayals (portrayals comparable to male sports coverage), it is not inconceivable that the newness of seeing such a program might make such an impression that more resources were allocated to them and that they were more easily recognized. Also, these novel items can be considered to be atypical in the experiences of the viewers. Research has demonstrated that individuals have better memory for atypical items than typical items (Shapiro & Fox, 2002). For both male and female participants in this study, the content of the sports messages featuring female athletes was recognized significantly better than those with male athletes. With a novelty effect in place while viewing these atypical portrayals of athletes on television impacting the recognition scores, and an increase in the resources allocated to the encoding of the message's content, it is also a logical assumption that the novelty effect has an impact on the amount of cognitive effort an individual gives; in this case, with women's sports a very small fraction of the overall televised sports coverage, the participants' relative inexperience with it may have caused them to allocate many resources to encoding it, and subsequently make it easier to recognize the content.

Past research has also shown that, even though atypical events may be remembered better, over time it is the typical that people are more willing to believe (Shapiro & Fox, 2002). People have better memory sensitivity for atypical items than typical ones, and even over time the ability to distinguish between old and new atypical items is quite good; however, even though the atypical information is not forgotten, it is recognition of typical information that fits into existing schema that is more likely to be accepted (Shapiro & Fox, 2002). What these findings mean in terms of these messages is that even though it is the sports clips featuring female athletes that are better remembered (the atypical television sports broadcast), it is male sports (the typical television sports broadcast) that individuals are more likely to accept as appropriate according to these own schemas about gender and sports. Future research in this area should consider some different methods of testing memory in order to gauge the effects of different types of gender portrayals. In lieu of the forced-choice, four-alternative, multiple-choice question recognition test that was utilized in this study, a yes/no signal detection task could measure both memory sensitivity and criterion bias. Also, adding a delayed memory test could assist in assessing the lasting effects of the viewing of these favorable and unfavorable gendered portrayals on the audience.

With an examination of self-reported arousal scores, it would appear that the television industry is making the correct decisions when choosing what sports to broadcast and in what manner. Sports featuring male athletes are what received the highest self-reported arousal ratings, and it is these sports that occupy more than 90% of the sports broadcasts on television. It appears that industry executives are making their programming decisions based on self-reported responses without examining physiological response, which turns out to give an incomplete impression. The question arises, if given the full picture would they broadcast more female sports? The likely answer is no, due to those self-reported arousal ratings, which would lead to a reinforcement of the societal bias against females occupying traditionally male spaces in a traditionally male realm. But the possible effects such a change could make, based on physiological arousal responses, could be worth examination.

One possible confound in the current research comes through in the perceived gender of the sport. The sports considered to be the most masculine (basketball and soccer) are team sports while the sports considered to be the most feminine (gymnastics and figure skating) are typically individual sports. Sports in which athletes rely on teamwork are the ones deemed most appropriate for males while females must rely on only themselves and their coach to succeed in the traditionally feminine sports (Parsons & Betz, 2001). It is difficult to know what kind of problem such a division in the type of sports, with the vastly different qualities inherent to each categorization, may have on the viewer. Future studies should include an increased number of clips featuring females competing in team sports and males competing in individual sports in an effort to better understand the effect these perceived differences could have.

References

Bates, C., & Heaven, P. C. L. (2001). Attitudes to women in society: The role of social dominance orientation and social values. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 11(1), 43-49.

Bem, S. L. (1977). On the utility of alternate procedures for assessing psychological androgyny. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 45, 196-205.

Bem, S. L. (1981). Gender schema theory: A cognitive account of sex typing. Psychological Review, 88, 369-371.

Billings, A. C. (2003). Dueling genders: Announcer bias in the 1999 U.S. Open tennis tournament. In R. S. Brown & D. O'Roarke (Eds.), Case studies in sport communication. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Billings, A. C., Angelini, J. R., & Eastman, S. T. (2005). Diverging discourses: Gender differences in televised golf announcing. Mass Communication & Society, 8(2), 155-171.

Billings, A. C., & Eastman, S. T. (2002). Selective representation of gender, ethnicity, and nationality in American television: Coverage of the 2000 Summer Olympics. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 37(3/4), 351-370.

Bradley, M. M., Greenwald, M. K., Petry, M. C., & Lang, P. J. (1992). Remembering pictures: Pleasure and arousal in memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18(2), 379-390.

Bradley, M. M., & Lang, P. J. (1994). Measuring emotion: The Self-Assessment Mannikin and the semantic differential. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychology, 25, 49-59.

Calvert, S. L., & Huston, A. C. (1987). Television and children's gender schemata. In L. S. Liben & M. L. Signorella (Eds.), Children's gender schemata (pp. 75-88). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Christopherson, N., Janning, M., & McConnell, E. D. (2002). Two kicks forward, one kick back: A content analysis of media discourses on the 1999 women's world cup soccer championship. Sociology of Sport Journal, 19(2), 170-188.

Cook, E. W. I. (2003). VPM reference manual. Birmingham, AL: Author.

Dawson, M., Schell, A., & Filion, D. (2000). The electrodermal system. In J. Cacioppo, L. Tassinary, & G. Berntson (Eds.), Handbook of psychophysiology (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Eastman, S. T., & Billings, A. C. (2001). Biased voices of sports: Racial and gender stereotyping in college basketball announcing. The Howard Journal of Communications, 12(4), 183-201.

Greenwald, M. K., Cook, E. W. I., & Lang, P. J. (1989). Affective judgment and psychophysiological response: Dimensional covariation in the evaluation of pictorial stimuli. Journal of Psychophysiology, 3, 51-64.

Halbert, C., & Latimer, M. (1994). "Battling" gendered language: An analysis of the language used by sports commentators in a televised coed tennis competition. Sociology of Sport Journal, 11(3), 298-308.

Hallmark, J. R., & Armstrong, R. N. (1999). Gender equity in televised sports: A comparative analysis of men's and women's NCAA Division 1 basketball championship broadcasts, 1991-1995. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 43, 222-235.

Holtzman, L. (2000). Media messages. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.

Hopkins, R., & Fletcher, J. E. (1994). Electrodermal measurement: Particularly effective for forecasting message influence on sales appeal. In A. Lang (Ed.), Measuring psychological responses to media messages (pp. 113-132). Hillsdale, N J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Hunt, R. R. (1995). The subtlety of distinctiveness: What von Restorff really did. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2, 105-112.

Jarvis, B. G. (2004). MediaLab research software (Version 2004). [Computer software]. New York: Empirisoft.

Keppel, G. (1982). Design and analysis: A researcher's handbook (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, N J: Prentice-Hall.

Kishiyama, M. M., & Yonelinas, A. P. (2003). Novelty effects on recollection and familiarity in recognition memory. Memory & Cognition, 31(7), 1045-1051.

Koivula, N. (2001). Perceived characteristics of sports categorized as gender-neutral, feminine and masculine. Journal of Sport Behavior, 24, 377-393.

Laberge, S., & Albert, M. (1999). Conceptions of masculinity and of gender transgressions in sport among adolescent boys. Men and Masculinities, 1(3), 243-267.

Lang, A. (1990). Involuntary attention and physiological arousal evoked by structural features and emotional content in TV commercials. Communication Research, 17(3), 275-299.

Lang, A. (1994). What can the heart tell us about thinking? In A. Lang (Ed.), Measuring psychological responses to media (pp. 99-111). Hillsdale, N J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Lang, A. (1996). The logic of inferential statistics with experimental data from nonprobability samples: Inspired by Cooper, Dupagne, Potter, and Sparks. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 40, 422-430.

Lang, A. (2000). The limited capacity model of mediated message processing. Journal of Communication, 50, 46-70.

Lang, A., Bolls, P. D., Potter, R. F., & Kawahara, K. (1999). The effects of production pacing and arousing content on the information processing of television messages. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 43, 451-475.

Lang, A., Dhillon, K., & Dong, Q. (1995). The effects of emotional arousal and valence on television viewers' cognitive capacity and memory. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 39, 313-327.

Lang, A., Newhagen, J., & Reeves, B. (1996). Negative video as structure: Emotion, attention, capacity, and memory. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 40, 460-477.

Lang, A., Schwartz, N. C., Lee, S., & Angelini, J. R. (2007). Processing radio PSAs: Production pacing, arousal, and age. Journal of Health Communication, 12(6), 583-601.

Lang, P. J. (1980). Behavioral treatment and bio-behavioral assessment: Computer applications. In J. B. Sidowki, J. H. Johnson, & T. A. Williams (Eds.), Technology in mental health care delivery systems (pp. 119-137). Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing.

Lopiano, D. A. (2000). Modern history of women in sports: Twenty-five years of Title IX. Clinics in Sports Medicine, 19(2), 163-173.

Martin, C. L., & Halverson Jr., C. F. (1981). A schematic processing model of sex typing and stereotyping in children. Child Development, 52(4), 1119-1134.

Martin, C. L., & Ruble, D. (2004). Children's search for gender cues: Cognitive perspectives on gender development. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13(2), 67-70.

Martin, C. L., Ruble, D. N., & Szkrybalo, J. (2002). Cognitive theories of early gender development. Psychological Bulletin, 128(6), 903-933.

Martin, I., & Venables, P. H. (1980). Techniques in psychophysiology. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Messner, M. A., Duncan, M. C., & Jensen, K. (1993). Separating the men from the girls: The gendered language of televised sports. Gender and Society, 7(1), 121-137.

Nathanson, A. I., Wilson, B. J., McGee, J., & Sebastian, M. (2002). Counteracting the effects of female stereotypes on television via active mediation. Journal of Communication, 52, 922-937.

Nixon, H. L., Maresca, P. J., & Silverman, M. A. (1979). Sex differences in college students' acceptance of females in sport. Adolescence, 14, 755-765.

Parker, A., Wilding, E., & Akerman, C. (1998). The von Restorff effect in visual object recognition memory in humans and monkeys: The role of frontal/perirhinal interaction. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 10(6), 691-703.

Parsons, E. M., & Betz, N. E. (2001). The relationship of participation in sports and physical activity to body objectification, instrumentality, and locus of control among young women. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 25(3), 209-222.

Pratto, F., Sidanius, J., Stallworth, L. M., & Malle, B. F. (1994). Social dominance orientation: A personality variable predicting social and political attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 741-763.

Pratto, E., Stallworth, L. M., Sidanius, J., & Siers, B. (1997). The gender gap in occupational role attainment: A social dominance approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 37-53.

Reber, A. S. (1967). Implicit learning of implicit grammars. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 77, 317-327.

Reber, A. S. (1989). Implicit learning and tacit knowledge. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 118(3), 219-235.

Shapiro, M. A., & Fox, J. R. (2002). The role of typical and atypical events in story memory. Human Communication Research, 28(1), 109-135.

Sidanius, J. (1993). The psychology of group conflict and the dynamics of oppression: A social dominance perspective. In S. Iyengar & W. McGuire (Eds.), Exploration in political psychology (pp. 183-219). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Sidanius, J., Liu, J., Shaw, J. S., & Pratto, F. (1994). Social dominance orientation, hierarchy attenuators and hierarchy enhancers: Social dominance theory and the criminal justice system. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 24, 338-366.

Sidanius, J., & Pratto, F. (1999). Social dominance. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Spence, J. T. (1993). Gender-related traits and gender ideology: Evidence for a multifactorial theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 624-635.

Squire, L. R., Knowlton, B., & Musen, G. (1993). The structure and organization of memory. Annual Review of Psychology, 44, 453-495.

Stern, R., Ray, W., & Quigley, K. (2001). Psychophysiological recording (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.

Tuggle, C. A. (1997). Differences in television sports reporting of men's and women's athletics: ESPN SportsCenter and CNN Sports Tonight. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 41, 14-24.

Tuggle, C. A., & Owen, A. (1999). A descriptive analysis of NBC's coverage of the centennial Olympics: The "games of the woman"? Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 23, 171-182.

Wilson, M. S., & Liu, J. (2003). Social dominance orientation and gender: The moderating role of gender identity. British Journal of Social Psychology, 42(2), 187-198.

James R. Angelini (Ph.D., Indiana University) is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Delaware. His research interests include the cognitive processing of media and the effects of gender in televised sports.