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Images of women in advertisements: effects on attitudes related to sexual aggression
Date: 1995
Author: Kyra Lanis, Katherine Covell
Publication: Sex Roles: A Journal of Research. Volume: 32. Issue: 9-10
The power of advertising to persuade, manipulate, and shape behavior has long been
recognized. Bretl and Cantor (1988) estimated that the average American is exposed to
over 37,000 advertisements each year through the medium of television alone. Whereas
there has been considerable investigation of gender role portrayals in advertisements,
comparatively little empirical attention has been paid to the portrayal of sexuality in
advertisements. The purpose of this study was to systematically examine the effects of
advertisements in which women are presented in either a sexually provocative or a
non-traditional manner, on sexual attitudes supportive of sexual aggression. There are
both empirical and theoretical bases for supposing a link between images of women in
advertisements and sexual attitudes.
There is some evidence in the existing literature that the stereotypic portrayal in
advertisements of women as housewives and mothers has an impact on attitudes. For
example, findings show an association between high exposure to such advertising and (1)
increased public self-consciousness and social anxiety in women (Gould, 1987), (2) a
decrease in women's achievement aspirations (Geis, Brown, Jennings & Porter, 1984),
and (3) a decrease in women's interest in political participation (Schwartz, Wagner,
Bannert & Mathes, 1987). The power of these stereotyped messages is further
exemplified in the role they play in the socialization of young children (Macklin & Kolbe,
1984; Schwartz & Markham, 1985; Tucker, 1984). In part as a result of such findings,
there has been somewhat of a decrease in stereotypic gender role presentations of women
in advertisements.
Research findings indicate that although some gender role stereotyping still exists
(Livingstone & Green, 1986; Rak & McMullen, 1987), women are being depicted also in
a wider range of social and occupational roles (Bretl & Cantor, 1980; Ferrante, Haynes &
Kingsley, 1988; Sullivan & O'Connor, 1988). However, there has been a parallel increase
in the sexually exploitive use of women in advertisements. In fact Sullivan and O'Connor
(1988) found a 60% increase since 1970 in the portrayal of women in purely "decorative"
roles, whereby the presence of a physically attractive and sexy woman was unrelated to
the advertised product.
While youth, beauty and sexuality are stressed in advertisement depictions of women
(Downs & Harrison, 1985; Ferrante et al., 1988), increasingly the emphasis appears to be
on sexuality and sexual availability. Soly and Kurzbard (1986) described the increased
use of sexually provocative and suggestive content in advertising as approaching
pornography in some cases. In their analysis of magazine advertisements, Soly and
Kurzbard found that illustrations of sexuality were more overt than earlier
advertisements, and that the absolute number of advertisements containing sexual
elements had increased with female models being disproportionately more likely to be
portrayed as sexually clad, partially clad, or nude. Further, in contrast to previous
limitations of such advertisements to certain adult magazines, these were now common in
general interest magazines.
It may be argued that such widespread overt depictions of women as sex objects can be
expected to have an impact on general beliefs and attitudes. There is evidence that
women hold very negative attitudes toward such advertisement portrayals of women (de
Young & Crane, 1992). However, existing empirical evidence of the effects of female
images on sexual attitudes is limited to studies of various media portrayals (e.g., movies
and magazines) of sexual aggression (see Malamuth & Donnerstein, 1984 for a review).
Several authors (e.g., Brownmiller, 1975; Burt, 1980) have suggested that sexually
degrading media depictions of women promote rape-supportive attitudes and beliefs.
Similarly, Malamuth and Briere (1986) proposed an indirect effects model to explain the
contribution of socio-cultural forces to sexual aggression against women.
To assess the influence of sexist advertisement portrayals of women we used four
subscales from Burt's (1980.) Sexual Attitudes Survey that have been used widely to
gauge rape supportive beliefs. Attitudes so measured have been found to predict various
rape-related attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors in a variety of settings (e.g., Check &
Malamuth, 1983; Demare, Lips, & Briere, 1993; Malamuth, 1983, 1986; Malamuth &
Check, 1980; Malamuth, Check & Briere, 1986; Malamuth, Haber & Feshbach, 1980).
Similarly, it has been found that these scales can be used to differentiate sexually
aggressive from non-sexually aggressive males (Briere & Malamuth, 1983; Koss &
Leonard, 1984).
We hypothesized that if advertisement portrayals of women influence beliefs, then scores
on the Sexual Attitude Survey would be higher (i.e., more negative) following exposure
to advertisements in which women are portrayed as sex objects compared to those
showing women in progressive roles. We also expected that males and females would be
differentially affected in their gender role attitudes by the various portrayals of women in
advertisements.
METHOD
Subjects
The participants were 90 (45 males and 45 female) white middle-class undergraduate
students from the University of Toronto. Data from a further two students were discarded
due to their failure to follow experimental instructions. The mean age of the students was
22.8 years (range 17-39 years). The students were recruited from courses in a variety of
disciplines including the social and physical sciences, engineering, and humanities.
Participation was on a voluntary basis in response to a request for help with two brief
pilot studies. Prospective volunteers were told that they would be helping with a study in
consumer psychology in which they would be asked to make a series of judgments about
some advertisements, and a second study in which they would be assisting with the
normalization of a questionnaire being developed by a researcher in the psychology
department. This was done in order to minimize student awareness of the true purpose of
the study and thereby maximize its validity. Students were fully debriefed upon
completion. In order to assess if they thought the two parts of the study were connected,
each student was asked if s/he had any comments or questions and were asked to expand
on any statements made. Based on these post-experimental discussions, it appeared that
none of the participants had realized the connection.
The students were randomly assigned to one of three advertisement female image
conditions (sex object, progressive, and product/control), subject to the constraint that
there be an equal number of males and females in each condition.
Materials
The influence of advertising on sexual attitudes was measured using the four scales from
Burt's (1980) Sexual Attitude Survey. These scales were the 9-item Sex Role
Stereotyping scale (SRS), (example item: "there is something wrong with a woman who
does not want to marry and raise a family"); the 9-item Adversarial Sexual Beliefs scale
(ASB), (example item: "most women are sly and manipulating when they are out to
attract a man"); the 6-item Acceptance of Interpersonal Violence (AIV) scale, 5 items of
which referred specifically to violence against women (example item: "sometimes the
only way to turn a cold woman on is by using force"); and 11 items measuring Rape Myth
Acceptance (RMA) (example item: "any healthy women can resist a rapist if she really
wants to"). The 35 items were scored on a seven point scale ranging from strongly
disagree to strongly agree.
The stimuli used in this study were 30 full page colour advertisements taken from a
variety of current issues of men's, women's and general interest magazines (e.g.,
Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Sports Illustrated, Gentleman's Quarterly, Time, Newsweek). Print
media were selected to allow controlling for extraneous variables such as verbal content,
jingles, and story-line. Twenty-five advertisements in which women were depicted as sex
objects, and 25 in which women were in progressive roles were prerated by five male and
five female undergraduate psychology students who did not participate in the main study.
Sex object images were defined as being depictions of women as sexual beings whose
main function in the advertisement was to be erotically enticing. Progressive image
advertisements were defined as non-traditional role-reversed portrayals of women
performing a variety of competent social functions. In neither of these conditions were
there any other human figures in the advertisement. The judges who performed the
preratings were given the above definitions of sex object and progressive image
advertisements and asked to rate on a 9 point scale the extent to which each
advertisement was representative of both image types. Advertisements used were those
which were rated by every rater as 8 or 9 on the one scale (i.e., highly representative of
one image), and 1 or 2 on the other (i.e., not at all representative of the other). For
example, to be classified as a sex-object image, the advertisement must have been rated
an 8 or 9 as exemplifying the sex object image description, and at 1 or 2 as an exemplar
of the progressive image description. The advertisements in the control condition were
entirely product oriented and devoid of human figures, and were not expected to have any
influence on the attitude measures.
The advertisements, in each of the three conditions equally, were for similar products, for
example, automobiles, hair products, alcohol, cigarettes, and food products. Each
advertisement was mounted on a 5[inches] x 8[inches] card for presentation. The cards
were randomly ordered before each session.
Procedure
Materials, including separate consent and instruction sheets were given to participants
who were then left alone to complete the study. The experimenter remained absent to
avoid possible influence of a female authority figure.
For the first part of the study, the participants were asked to rate the effectiveness of each
of the advertisements they were given (in order) on a 5 point scale on the following
perceptual dimensions: graphical design, use of colour, amount of product information
presented, spatial layout, and general appeal. This general appeal rating was used to
determine if the different types of advertisements were inherently different in their appeal.
The other questions were used to maximize equivalent scanning of the advertisements
across conditions, and as a distractor from the true purpose of the experiment. Upon
completion of this task, the participants were instructed to read and sign a further consent
form and proceed with the second study. In the second part, the participants completed
the four scales of Burt's Sexual Attitude Survey.
RESULTS
To assess the comparability of the three types of advertisements, a one-way ANOVA was
performed on the general appeal ratings. This yielded a main effect of condition (F(2, 84)
= 7.50, p [less than] .01). The control advertisements were rated as more appealing (M =
33.87) than were the sex object (M = 30.33) and the progressive advertisements (M =
29.13). The maximum possible appeal score here was 50.
Separate 2 (gender) x 3 (advertisement) ANOVAs were performed on each of the Sexual
Attitude Survey scales. The means for each condition are presented in Table I.
On the RMA scale there was a main effect of gender F(1, 84) = 11.95, p [less than] .001,
and a two-way interaction between gender and advertisement, F(2, 84) = 7.69, p [less
than] .001. Post-hoc comparisons (all post-hocs were performed with Newman-Keuls
tests) showed that males in the sex object condition were more accepting of the rape myth
than were those in the control condition, and females in both the sex object and
progressive conditions were less accepting of the rape myth than were those in the control
condition.
Similarly on the SRS scale, there was a main effect for gender (F(1, 84) = 9.56, p [less
than] .01), and a gender x advertisement interaction (F(2, 84) = 5.82, p [less than] .01).
Post-hocs showed that males in the sex object condition, and females in the control
condition showed the highest scores.
Table I. Mean Score and Total (TOT) Sexual Attitude Scores as a
Function of Sex and Advertising Condition
Sex-object Progressive Control
Males
SRS 29.80(a) 25.53 23.27
ASB 27.47 24.07 22.33
AIV 18.07(a) 14.73 11.47
RMA 27.40(a) 23.80 21.00
TOT 102.73(a) 88.80 78.07
Females
SRS 20.00 17.27 26.07(a)
ASB 21.20 17.27 22.27
AIV 11.40 10.27 12.80
RMA 17.93 14.93 24.07(a)
TOT 70.53 59.73 85.20
a Significantly different (Newman-Keuls post hoe tests).
For the ASB scale, there was a main effect of gender, F(1, 84) = 11.04, p [less than] .01,
with males being more accepting of adversarial sexual beliefs than were women. For the
AIV scale, there was a main effect of gender, F(1, 84) = 11.48, p [less than] .001, and a
gender x advertisement interaction, F(2, 84) = 6.13, p [less than] .01. Post-hoc tests
showed that males in the sex object condition scored higher on AIV than all other groups.
In order to assess overall sexual attitude, an analysis was performed on the total score.
This yielded a main effect of gender, F(1, 84) = 17.37, p [less than] .001, and a gender x
advertisement interaction, F(2, 84) = 8.50, p [less than] .001. Post-hoc tests showed the
following. Males in the sex object condition scored significantly higher than males in the
control condition, and higher than females in all conditions. Further, males in the sex
object condition and males in the progressive image condition scored higher than did the
females in those conditions. Finally, females in the progressive image condition scored
lower than those in the control condition. These differences are illustrated in Fig. 1.
There were no other main effects or interactions.
DISCUSSION
The findings show support for our hypothesis that media portrayals of women can
influence sexual attitudes and beliefs. The data indicate that males who see print media
advertisements in which women are presented as sex objects are more likely to evidence
increased sex role stereotypic and rape myth beliefs, and are likely to be more accepting
of interpersonal violence (primarily against women), than are males exposed to other
types of advertisements. In contrast, among women, gender role stereotypic beliefs and
rape myth acceptance were actually lowered when they saw females in advertisements. It
appears that the images used in the experimental conditions may have brought to the
attention of the female subjects the issues of sexual exploitation of women in the media,
and perhaps the social alternatives available to women, thus decreasing their tolerance for
rape-supportive beliefs. In fact, females in the progressive conditions consistently
produced the lowest scores, and males in the sex object condition consistently produced
the highest scores, on attitudes supportive of sexual aggression. It is notable that such
effects were obtained among a well educated middle class sample by exposing them to
only 10 advertisements.
Exposing males to progressive images of women in advertisements seemed to have no
impact on attitudes. Of interest here are findings (Baron & Straus, 1984) that rape rates
correlate not only with circulation indices of pornography, but also with women's status:
U.S. states in which women had the most status and social power were those in which
Baron & Straus found the highest rates of sexual assault. Such findings have been
attributed to a real increase in rape incidents arising from a backlash against the feminist
movement, as well as from an increased availability of pornography or sexually exploitive
portrayals of women. The data from the males in our sample are not inconsistent with the
suggestion that attitudes supportive of sexual aggression may be elicited by seeing
women in non-traditional roles. And the findings from the females in our sample indicate
that women exposed to progressive models may be more intolerant of sex-stereotypic
beliefs and sexual aggression. In turn, this may indicate a greater likelihood of reporting
rapes. In today's society, not only are women being sexually exploited more (as reflected
in our sex-object condition), but their status is higher and they are competing with men in
the job market (as reflected in our progressive condition). We assume that for males these
two conditions, and perhaps their social analogues, increase sexually hostile attitudes
toward women. Women in both cases become less tolerant of these attitudes, and
presumably therefore less accepting of sexually aggressive behaviors. Further study is, of
course, necessary to test our assumptions. It would be helpful also in future research to
use a larger sample size than used here, and a sample that comprises the general
population rather than our specialized population of university students.
We remain aware also that our findings are of short-term attitudinal effects only.
However, it seems reasonable to assume that the commonality of advertisements such as
those we used in the sex object condition (in magazines, on television, public
transportation and so forth), provides frequent reinforcement of rape supportive attitudes
among males. There is indication in the literature (Corne, Briere, & Esses, 1992; Davis &
Bauserman, 1993) that repeated exposure to pornography socializes rape supportive
attitudes. Repeated exposure to advertisements in which women are presented as sex
objects also may socialize similar attitudes. Do these attitudes matter? It might be argued
that sexual attitudes alone, especially those engendered by advertisements, are not
predictive of actual sexually aggressive behaviors (c.f., Demare et al., 1993), and are
therefore of little importance. But attitudes do guide behaviors. And even the most subtle
presentation of gender biased information, for example the use of the generic masculine
noun and pronoun, can have a significant impact on social choices and behaviors (Briere
& Lanktree, 1983; see also Gallivan vs. Begg, 1991).
Why the antithetical effect of advertisements portraying women was obtained, and why
the attitudes of males in the progressive condition were not more positive is of interest for
further study, particularly since both male and females rated these advertisements as less
appealing than those of product orientation. We believe the effects of these images of
women may result from the current struggle for sexual equality and the existing power
structure.
By viewing women as exclusively sexual beings whose purpose is to sexually arouse and
gratify men, a power differential is created in which women generally are subordinate.
This power hierarchy may facilitate the perception of women as appropriate targets for
sexually aggressive behaviours. Conversely, being exposed to women in progressive,
traditionally male roles, may create a power differential in favor of women thus
threatening men by challenging their traditional dominance and putting them in direct
competition with women. In this context, attitudes supportive of sexual aggression might
be explained as an attempt to realign the shift in the balance of power. We are currently
examining this hypothesis by assessing reactions to advertisements in which men and
women are depicted as having equal social status.
Our findings underscore the need to be concerned about the narrowing gap between
pornography and the portrayal of females in advertisements. Whereas earlier research
showed a link between exposure to sexually violent media and attitudes supportive of
sexual aggression, this study showed that exposure to common advertisements in which
women are portrayed as sex-objects might be sufficient to increase hostile sexual attitudes
among males. On only one of the four scales used (adversarial sexual beliefs) did
advertisement content have no effect on the sexual attitudes measured. The power of
advertisements to manipulate attitudes of such importance to our interpersonal and
societal well being should not be underestimated. Advertisements are more pervasive
than pornography, and unlike pornography are presented in a socially acceptable
framework.
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Kyra Lanis University of Toronto
Katherine Covell University College of Cape Breton
