Sex in Advertising

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how sexuality in advertising serves several purposes. The prevalent view is that sex itself is appealing, so it gets people to pay attention to the advertising message surrounding it and there is also a shock value that has become more and more important to some advertisers for the same reason--to get the attention of the consumer. It looks at how American advertisers know that sex sells products and how they use sex in ways both overt and subtle, depending on the product and the campaign. It evaluates how much of our culture is based on physical attractiveness and its power to persuade, to attract, to influence and succeed and how sex is used in advertising as an expression of physical attractiveness. It analyzes how the advertising media clearly believe in the power of physical attractiveness to persuade and how spokespersons for products and other people used in television commercials and print ads tend to be physically attractive far beyond the norm in society.

From the Paper:

"Cialdini (1985) discusses the reasons why people are persuaded to take action, and while physical attractiveness is included as one of the reasons for a person's being persuasive, the author notes that recent findings indicate that this is an even greater advantage than it was once believed to be. Attractive people seem to elicit an immediate response from others predisposing these others to accept their message. The research indicates that we automatically assign to attractive individuals certain favorable traits, such as talent, kindness, honesty, and intelligence, and we make these judgments without being aware that we are being influenced by physical attractiveness. Cialdini finds much of this research unsettling for its implications as to how we make decisions, including evidence showing that our judicial system is also influenced by this same factor: "It now appears that unless they have used their attractiveness to commit a crime. . . good-looking people are likely to receive highly favorable treatment in the legal system" (Cialdini, 1985, 167)."

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