Introduction
Advertising has been a popular topic among researchers over the past six decades. Because advertising is used to persuade, researchers have carefully examined various advertising images and studied the effects such ads can have on society.
Serving as a powerful marketing tool, advertising not only persuades its audience to buy a product, it also tells them how they should live their lives. The glamour and beauty depicted throughout advertisements produces idealized images and lifestyles. Research has shown a relationship between these idealized images and issues of low self-esteem and life dissatisfaction.
The media have a powerful voice in today’s society, and its ability to greatly impact individuals cannot be ignored.
Countless research has been dedicated to examining stereotypes in advertising over the past several decades. Most of the stereotypes studied include gender, race, age, body image, social status, and lifestyles. Women have often been depicted as dependent and decorative, sex objects, unemployed homemakers, and caregivers, while men have been depicted in more positive ways. Minorities have been depicted in narrow and stereotypical roles and older adults have been typically underrepresented and negatively portrayed (Xue & Ellzey, 2009).
Social Effects of Advertising: A Look at Media Theories
Social Comparison Theory
Leon Festinger’s Social Comparison Theory explains that individuals have a drive to make self-evaluation. As long as people live in a community and not in a secluded place, social comparisons are bound to occur (Wood, 1996). Advertising images are so prevalent in today’s media world that people are bombarded with them every day. These images are easily recalled and are used by individuals to make comparisons to their own lives.
According to Richins’ research and analysis of Social Comparison Theory, he suggests that perhaps these media images are the most frequent social comparison in American culture, and are often unsought. These images are pervasive, providing many opportunities to compare with respect to material possessions, level of attractiveness, and other criteria. Because most of these images are idealized, the comparison is upward, and comparers find themselves deficient with respect to the comparison standard (Richins, 1995).
However, these are idealized, often modified and digitally altered, images. Technology and special effects are used to change the original subject. “Airbrushing, cropping, and editing techniques make the imperfect more perfect, and lighting effects or camera angles can make the ordinary seem special” (Richins, 1995, pg. 594). These unrealistic comparisons and expectations can have great effects on ideas, beliefs, self-image and acceptance.
Social Learning/Modeling Theory
Albert Bandura (1961), famous psychologist and researcher, developed the Social Learning Theory, and based on his theory people can learn behaviors by watching others. Mere observation can affect the way individuals react to specific situations. His most famous experiment focused on aggression with the use of his Bobo Dolls.
The results of this study provide strong evidence that observation of cues produced by behavior of others is one effective means of eliciting certain forms of responses for which the original probability is very low or zero. Indeed, social imitation may hasten or short cut the acquisition of new behaviors without the necessity of reinforcing successive approximations as suggested by Skinner (Bandura, 1961, pg. 580).
Bandura’s Social Learning Theory, also known as Modeling Theory, can also be applied to the media and its use of images in magazines. As individuals are constantly bombarded with advertisements, it is reasonable to expect them to learn certain behaviors based off of what they see.
“Researchers have found that in the United States, 94 percent of female characters in television programs are thinner than the average American woman, with who the media frequently associate happiness, desirability, and success in life” (Yamamiya, 2004, pg. 74). There is a definite correlation between idealized media images and low self-esteem as well as the perpetuation of stereotypes by these images.
Gender Stereotypes
It is important to examine the content of media advertisements and images to better understand the implications and effects they can have on individuals.
Early research focusing on gender roles in advertising began with researchers such as Alice Courtney and Sarah Wernick Lockeretz (1971). These two women focused particularly on roles portrayed by women in magazine advertisements. They studied print advertisements in magazines directed toward both male and female audiences and analyzed the stereotypes.
At the time of the study, about 33 percent of all full-time workers in the United States were women; however, only 12 percent of the workers shown in the advertisements studied were female. Moreover, if professional entertainers of both sexes were excluded, the proportion of women worker pictures drops to just 7 percent (Courtney & Wernick Lockeretz, 1971).
Research suggests that exposure to gender-role stereotypes in advertising often influences gender-stereotyped attitudes. The messages conveyed in advertisements shape society’s ideas about appropriate gender roles as well as attitudes toward and expectations of men and women (Lindner, 2004).
In her research on images of women in magazines, Katharina Lindner noted that exposure to gender role stereotyping in advertisements is related to stereotypical ideas about how women are supposed to behave and they roles should occupy.
The results of Lindner’s content analysis of images of women in both “Time” magazine and “Vogue” from 1955 to 2002 found that 78 percent of all advertisements contained stereotypical images of women (Lindner, 2004). Most stereotypes found in these images remained fairly consistent throughout the years despite the immense change in female-societal roles due to the Women’s Movement and trends toward equality. Stereotype categories included objectification, ritualization of subordination to men, low degrees of social power.
An increase in sexual content displayed by both men and women over the years has been documented in several studies. One study, conducted by Reichert and Carpenter, looked at sexual content in magazine advertising from 1983 to 2003. They found, over the years, that female and male models are more likely to be proactively dressed and engaged in sexual contact (Reichert & Carpenter, 2004).
Racial Stereotypes
Racial stereotypes have been an issue in advertising for years, and even after the Civil Rights Movement, advertisers still seem to categorize individuals by race and sometimes leave racial groups out altogether.
An early study that concentrated on race in advertising was conducted in the 1950s and focused on the treatment accorded by various minority groups in short stories appearing in widely read American magazines during 1934 and 1943. This research showed that, in general, the closer the characters were to the American norm of white, Protestant, and English-speaking, the better treatment they received. African Americans, for example, were never depicted in the stories as heroes or heroines, never as members of the Armed Forces, and always belonging to the lowest occupational group (Shuey, King, & Griffith, 1950).
A few decades later, S. Plous and Dominique Neptune (1995) conducted a study during that focused on racial and gender biases shown in magazines. This content analysis was performed over a 10-year period, and examined fashion advertisements. Plous and Neptune found that African Americans were underrepresented in “white” magazines. “These findings suggest that racial biases in magazine advertisements persisted, and in some cases increased, between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s” (Plous & Neptune, 1995, pg. 1). Their study, along with other research, suggests that advertising profoundly influences how people perceive and relate to one another.
Couple Stereotypes
Although much research has been dedicated to examining advertising stereotypes, little research has focused on stereotypes of couple images in advertising, specifically magazines. Curious to study human relationships, researchers Fei Xue and Marilyn Ellzey conducted a content analysis of couple images in advertisements in six consumer magazines. The results suggest that the typical couple image portrayed in ads in mainstream magazines was a young, heterosexual Caucasian couple with thin bodies and a trendy style either posing in front of the camera or enjoying leisure time in a relaxing setting (Xue & Ellzey, 2009).
Conclusion
Xue & Ellzey (2009) question whether typical couple portrayed in such idealized settings too beautiful. Scholars argue that these idealized images can generate substantial psychological effects on individuals because people use the content to make self-comparisons and in turn may feel less satisfied with their own circumstances, which can lead to lower-self esteem and lower life satisfactions (Xue & Ellzey, 2009).
The studies and research mentioned conclude that there is a definite relationship between the viewing of ideal media images and negative effects on society such as the perpetuation of stereotypes and low levels of self-esteem and life satisfaction. Minorities have been depicted, over the years, in negative, stereotypical ways. Gender-role stereotypes have been amplified through media images and individuals have struggled with the fact that they cannot “measure up” to the seemingly perfect images and lifestyles.
As the world, and even more specifically the United states, has made leaps and bounds toward equality and acceptance, it seems that the advertising industry and media in general are somewhat behind the trend.
