What Matters More—Breaking Tradition or Stereotype Content? Envious and Paternalistic Gender Stereotypes and Advertising Effectiveness

Abstract

The outcomes of 2 experiments investigating the effectiveness of advertisements that use (non)traditional stereotypes of women (Experiment 1) or men (Experiment 2) are reported. Effectiveness of the ads was tested in relation to perceivers' attitudes toward female or male gender roles, respectively. The main finding was that for both male and female versions of the advertisements, the paternalistic ad strategies were more effective than were the envious ones, supporting the predictions of the stereotype content model over the classic prediction of negative effects of nontraditional gender portrayals for advertising effectiveness. Moreover, attitudes toward gender roles played only a limited role in determining ad effectiveness. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Does it pay to break male gender stereotypes in advertising? A comparison of advertisement effectiveness between the United Kingdom, Poland and South Africa

“…Househusband). Previous research provides support for this hypothesis (Zawisza & Cinnirella, 2010). The present paper attempts to replicate this finding through examining a sample from the United Kingdom and then testing its generalizability to Polish and South African samples.…”

“…This has proven applicable to gendered advertising (Infanger & Sczesny, 2015;Zawisza & Cinnirella, 2010). Moreover, 'warmth' is afforded primacy over 'competence' , such that warmth influences affective and behavioural judgements to a greater extent than competence (Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2006).…”

“…Research has operationalized the notion of advertisement effectiveness differently (Wolin, 2003;Zawisza & Cinnirella, 2010). The concepts of advertisement evaluation and purchase intent have featured particularly prominently in these attempts.…”

“…Barry, Gilly, & Doran, 1985;Bellizzi & Milner, 1991;Debevec & Iyer, 1986;Duker & Tucker, 1977;Ford & Latour, 1993;Garst & Bodenhausen, 1997;Whipple & Courtney, 1980;Worth, Smith, & Mackie, 1992). Palan (2001), Wolin (2003), and Zawisza and Cinnirella (2010) provide useful overviews to this research. Such ambiguity is all the more surprising given firm theoretical arguments in support of the relationship between gender attitudes and the effectiveness of gendered advertisements.…”

“…Yet most investigations to date have focused primarily on female gender roles and have used female samples (Orth & Holancova, 2004). They have also often returned inconsistent findings (Zawisza & Cinnirella, 2010) and leave two particular questions unanswered: are traditional or non-traditional gender portrayals more effective and are related preferences influenced by pre-existing gender attitudes? This paper incorporates theorizing concerning (gender) stereotypes proposed by Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, and Xu (2002) the stereotype content model (SCM) -in order to examine the first question.…”