Communality sells: The impact of perceivers' sexism on the evaluation of women's portrayals in advertisements

Infanger, Martina; Bosak, Janine; Sczesny, Sabine (2012). Communality sells: The impact of perceivers' sexism on the evaluation of women's portrayals in advertisements. European journal of social psychology, 42(2), pp. 219-226. Wiley-Blackwell 10.1002/ejsp.868

[img] Text
ejsp868.pdf - Published Version
Restricted to registered users only
Available under License Publisher holds Copyright.

Download (136kB) | Request a copy

Portrayals of women in advertisements have a significant impact on the maintenance of gender stereotypes in society. Therefore, the present research investigates the effectiveness of communal and agentic female characters in advertisements as well as the question how evaluations of such characters are influenced by perceivers' sexist attitudes toward women. Results show that communal female advertising characters are evaluated more favorably than agentic ones and that these evaluations predict advertising effectiveness. Benevolent sexism predicts more positive evaluations of communal female advertising characters (studies 1 and 2). Moreover, hostile sexism predicts less positive evaluations of agentic female advertising characters when it is assessed under time pressure (Study 2). Implications of these findings for the perpetuation of gender stereotypes in advertisements and in society are discussed.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

07 Faculty of Human Sciences > Institute of Psychology > Social Neuroscience and Social Psychology

UniBE Contributor:

Infanger, Martina, Bosak, Janine, Sczesny, Sabine

Subjects:

300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology

ISSN:

0046-2772

Publisher:

Wiley-Blackwell

Language:

English

Submitter:

Andrea Stettler

Date Deposited:

26 May 2014 11:39

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 14:34

Publisher DOI:

10.1002/ejsp.868

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.53066

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/53066

Actions (login required)

Edit item Edit item
Provide Feedback