Gender :: essays research papers

Sex Roles A Journal of Research, May 1997 v36 n9-10 p551(22) Advertisings effects on mens gender role attitudes. Jennifer Garst Galen V. Bodenhausen. Authors Abstract COPYRIGHT 1997 Plenum produce Corporation We posited that media images of men influence the gender role attitudes that men express soon after characterization to the images. A total of 212 men (87% European American, 7% Asian or Asian American, 3% African American, and 3% other) viewed clipping advertisements containing images of men that varied in terms of how traditionally masculine vs. androgynous they were and whether the models were the very(prenominal) age or much older than the viewers. Men who had initially been less traditional espoused more traditional attitudes than any other group after exposure to traditionally masculine models, although they continued to endorse relatively nontraditional views after exposure to androgynous models. These findings suggest that nontraditional mens gender role attitudes w hitethorn be rather unstable and susceptible to momentary influences such as those found in advertising. Full Text COPYRIGHT 1997 Plenum Publishing Corporation In the average American household, the television is turned "on" for almost seven hours each day, and the typical adult or child watches two to three hours of television per day. It is estimated that the average child sees 360,000 advertisements by the age of eighteen (Harris, 1989). Due to this extensive exposure to mass media depictions, the medias influence on gender role attitudes has become an sphere of considerable interest and concern in the past quarter century. Analyses of gender portrayals have found predominantly stereotypic portrayals of dominant males and nurturant females within the contexts of advertisements (print and television), magazine fiction, newspapers, child-oriented print media, textbooks, literature, film, and popular music (Busby, 1975 Durkin, 1985a Leppard, Ogletree, & Wallen, 1993 Lov dal, 1989 Pearson, Turner, & Todd-Mancillas, 1991 Rudman & Verdi, 1993 Signorielli & Lears, 1992). Most of the research to date on the effects of gender-role images in the media has focused mainly on the female gender role. A review of research on men in the media suggests that, except for film literature, the topic of masculinity has not been turn to adequately (Fejes, 1989). Indeed, as J. Katz (1995) recently noted, "there is a glaring absence of a thorough body of research into the power of cultural images of masculinity" (p. 133). Katz suggests that perusing the impact of advertising represents a useful place to begin addressing this lacuna.