The Effectiveness of Using Sexual Appeals in Advertising: Memory for Sexual and Nonsexual Visual Content Across Genders

This study empirically investigates the effectiveness of using visual sexual appeals on the memory of men and women. It examines memory for the commercials activated by sexual versus nonsexual visual appeals. A mixed-factorial experiment was conducted. Visual recognition and free recall were recorde...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of media psychology 2018, Vol.30 (4), p.184-195
Main Author: Samson, Lelia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Advertising
Distraction
Evolutionary Psychology
Female
Free Recall
Human
Human Sex Differences
Male
Marketing
Memory
Sexual Attraction
Test Construction
Visual Memory
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Summary:This study empirically investigates the effectiveness of using visual sexual appeals on the memory of men and women. It examines memory for the commercials activated by sexual versus nonsexual visual appeals. A mixed-factorial experiment was conducted. Visual recognition and free recall were recorded in 146 participants (males = 71 and females = 75). The results substantiate the evolutionary psychology claims. Support for the motivational information-processing and the distraction hypothesis was found in male viewers. The results indicate that sexual appeals enhance memory for the advertisements themselves, but they distract men from processing brand-related information. Male participants encoded and recalled less brand-related information from advertisements with sexual appeals. The study offers guidelines for advertisers and marketing producers while also providing insight into gender/sex differences in processing sexual stimuli. It also makes a key theoretical contribution to the field by parsing out the influence of sexual versus nonsexual visual content from the confounding impact of visual sexual versus verbal nonsexual memory.
ISSN:1864-1105
2151-2388
DOI:10.1027/1864-1105/a000194