Advertising's effects on men's gender role attitudes

Sex Roles: A Journal of Research,  May, 1997  by Jennifer Garst,  Galen V. Bodenhausen

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Contrary to the thought that male participants would perceive the younger models more favorably than the older models, participants' overall perceptions of the media models did not vary as a function of the models' ages, F [less than] 1, ns. However, the male gender role attitudes of the participants did interact with the age of the models in a pattern close to the one found when participants' ratings of the models' similarity were examined, F(1, 196) = 4.23, p [less than] .05 (see Table II, bottom section). Whereas overall perceptions of the younger versus older models did not differ among less traditional participants, F(1, 104) = 1.03, p [greater than] .15, more traditional participants perceived the younger models somewhat more favorably than the older models, F(1, 100) = 3.45, p [less than] .07.

Effects of Male Media Models on Subsequent Male Gender Role Attitudes

A central question of the present investigation was to determine whether male media images can have an immediate effect on men's gender role attitudes and whether such effects are moderated by the traditionalism of participants' male gender role attitudes and the demographic similarity of the media models to the viewers.

In order to determine whether participants' male gender role attitudes were affected by viewing the media models, participants' attitudes immediately after viewing the advertisements were analyzed using analysis of co-variance (ANCOVA). The average Gender Attitude Inventory scores were examined as a function of type of original gender role attitude held (more traditional versus less traditional), type of media portrayal (highly androgynous, mildly androgynous, or traditionally masculine), and age of the media models (young versus old), with the participants' original male gender role attitudes covaried out. Not surprisingly, original male gender role attitude was a significant covariate (p [less than] .001) of the gender role attitudes they expressed after they had viewed the two advertisements.

As expected, the impact of advertising images of men was moderated by the male gender role attitudes of the viewers. The average posttest GAI scores of more versus less traditional participants were differentially influenced by the type of media portrayals they viewed, F(2, 199) = 4.31, p [less than] .05 (see Table III).(6) While the difference in less traditional participants' responses to the three different portrayals was significant, F(2, 107) = 4.80, p [less than] .01, there was only a marginal difference in more traditional participants' responses to the media portrayals, F(2, 99) = 2.37, p [less than] .10. Thus, less traditional participants were indeed more susceptible to media influences than their more traditional counterparts. Compared to those respondents who viewed the highly and mildly androgynous portrayals, less traditional participants who viewed the traditionally masculine portrayals endorsed more traditional male gender role attitudes, F(1, 72) = 7.97, p [less than] .01, and F(1, 70) = 6.62, p [less than] .05, respectively. The average adjusted GAI scores for less traditional participants who saw the highly androgynous and mildly androgynous media portrayals did not differ from one another, [TABULAR DATA FOR TABLE III OMITTED] F [less than] 1, ns. Contrary to the possibility that less traditional men may have developed defenses against traditional prescriptions for male behaviors, less traditional men's gender role attitudes became more traditional, as compared to more traditional men's attitudes, after viewing traditionally masculine male images, F(1, 68) = 5.29, p [less than] .05.