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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Although the influence of the advertising content on the post-exposure gender role attitudes of the more traditional respondents was only marginally significant overall, it may be useful to examine, somewhat tentatively, the pattern of responses seen among these individuals. The more traditional participants who saw the mildly androgynous portrayals displayed significantly greater traditionalism than those who saw the highly androgynous portrayals, F(1, 66) = 4.12, p [less than] .05, and revealed marginally greater traditionalism relative to those who viewed the traditionally masculine portrayals, F(1, 68) = 3.58, p [less than] .07. There were no differences between more traditional participants who saw the media portrayals that were gender-typed as highly androgynous and traditionally masculine, F [less than] 1, ns.

Contrary to the tenets of social learning theory, it appears that viewers' liking for the highly and mildly androgynous media models may be unrelated to these models' influence. Although there was a nonsignificant trend for type of media portrayal, F(2, 199) = 2.78, p [less than] .07, this was qualified by participants' original gender role attitudes, F(2, 199) = 4.31, p [less than] .05 (see Table III). Likewise, contrary to Hypothesis 3, it appears that even though the age of the media models tended to serve as a similarity and attractiveness cue for more traditional participants, more versus less traditional participants were not more likely to emulate the behaviors and interests of younger versus older models, F [less than] 1, ns.

DISCUSSION

It appears that men's gender role attitudes can be influenced by the images of men they regularly see in the mass media. Rather than being fixed in memory, it seems that gender role attitudes are dynamic entities that are susceptible to momentary influences that emphasize either more or less traditional images of masculinity. However, it also appears evident that the specific impact that media images have is dependent on how traditional the male viewers are and the type of gender role behaviors and interests to which they are exposed.

Contrary to the thought that less traditional men may have developed defenses against the more limiting traditional prescriptions for male behavior, the current investigation suggests that even less traditional men are not immune, at least in the short-term, to the influence of images that reinforce the cultural norm of strong, highly masculine men. Granted that the influence of traditionally masculine images may only be short-term, this pattern still makes one wonder about the malleability of less traditional men's gender role attitudes, particularly given that men are generally portrayed in a stereotypic fashion in the mass media (e.g., Busby, 1975; Pearson et al., 1991). Wilson and Hodges (1992) have posited that when people hold complex attitudes, as less traditional men are likely to do, the most salient part of the attitude will have the most influence when a choice is made. Although less traditional men hold less traditional attitudes, they are also part of a culture that places a high value on masculine behaviors and interests and a somewhat questionable value on men displaying feminine behaviors and interests. Since less traditional men's representations of men are rather wide, including both traditional and nontraditional elements, less traditional men are susceptible to images that make more traditional elements of their attitudes salient. The salience of less traditional images, on the other hand, fails to induce change. This lack of influence may occur because the media representations are not sufficiently different from less traditional men's preexisting attitudes or even that less traditional men are less sensitive to nontraditional masculine images that are largely unsupported, if not discouraged, by strong cultural norms.