Abstract
This research investigates differences in men's and women's attitudes toward ads featuring product-relevant sex appeals. It is found that women, but not men, were more negative toward an ad featuring an attractive opposite-sex model when their commitment thoughts were heightened. Women were also more negative toward an ad with an attractive same-sex model in the presence of commitment thoughts, but only when they scored high on sociosexuality. Men appeared unaffected, regardless of their level of sociosexuality. Commitment thoughts were manipulated by two types of prime, a parenting prime (study1) and a romantic prime (study 2). Results are explained by differences in how men and women react to sexual material and by differences in men's and women's evolved mating preferences.
Highlights
Both women’s and men’s attitudes toward ads containing irrelevant or overly explicit sex appeals are typically negative because such content violates certain norms
For ads in which the sex appeal is related to the product, attitudes are less positive for women when they are primed with parenting thoughts
Consistent with predictions of evolutionary psychology, men find what they want in an ad with sexual opposite-sex content and carry on to form positive attitudes, whereas women regulate their judgments differently and will find a mismatch between their current commitment thoughts and the sexual opposite-sex ad content
Summary
Both women’s and men’s attitudes toward ads containing irrelevant or overly explicit sex appeals (e.g., a straddling model promoting hamburgers) are typically negative because such content violates certain norms. Among women with more positive attitudes toward sex per se, attitudes toward ads featuring irrelevant sex are similar to those of men (Sengupta and Dahl, 2008). Both evolutionary and social explanations propose that women appreciate sex when perceived within a frame of relationship commitment whereas men appreciate sex whether relational or casual (Trivers, 1972; Buss, 1998; Schwartz and Rutter, 1998; Baumeister and Twenge, 2002; Hill, 2002). Women with attitudes that are more positive toward sex per se can be expected to hold attitudes toward ads featuring irrelevant sex that are similar to those of men
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