Effects of Violent and Sexual Advertisements on Product Recall
Janelle Hamann and Madison Rosenbaum
WSU Tri-Cities
Introduction
It is estimated that by the time a child enters middle school, they will have seen more than 8,000 murders and 100,000 other acts of violence, such as rape and assault, on both television programs and commercials (Bushman & Phillips, 2001). If these advertisements are not effective in causing memory recall, then the several negative side effects of being overexposed to so much violent or sexual content are possibly caused for no reason and the massive amount of money spent every year is wasted. Bushman and Bonacci (2002) researched whether or not violent or sexual television programs interfere with the memory process of recalling products shown in between the televised programs. They discovered that both sexual and violent television programs impaired memory in the recall of the products shown when surveyed directly after viewing the programs and twenty-four hours later. On the other hand, Fried and Johanson (2008) researched whether or not Bushman and Bonacci’s results were true in regards to a larger population. Results showed that there was no effect on memory of advertised products exhibited (Fried & Johanson, 2008). So the question remains, does violent or sexual content have an effect on memory of products shown within an advertisement?
Hypothesis
We hypothesized that commercials with higher levels of sexual or violent themes are related to memory recall of the products shown with the advertisements. The more distracting the commercial is with violent or sexual themes then the less likely the consumer will remember or recall the product.
Results
We conducted a one-way ANOVA test to identify whether or not participants recalled the product presented in the commercial. The test results revealed there were significant differences between the three commercial categories, F(2,76)=4.00, p=.02. We performed a Tukey’s HSD Post-Hoc Test to discover which variable experienced significant change. Results revealed that the overall sexual product memory(M=.98, s=.70) is significantly lower than the violent product memory (M=1.33, s=.58), however not significantly different than the neutral product memory (M=1.25, s=.71).
Discussion
Our results did support our prediction and Bushman and Bonacci’s (2002) findings as far as sexual commercials, which did in fact impair the memory formation of products shown in commercials. According to our results, commercials that contain sexual content are not as successful at forming memory to be recalled later of products. The violent commercials, however, did support the lack of impaired memory discovered in Fried and Johanson’s (2008) study and Ferguson, Cruz, Martinez, Rueda, and Ferguson’s (2010) research. Some of the limitations that may have influenced these results are small sample size, the quality and quantity of commercials used as our independent variables, participants’ possible desensitivity to sexual and violent themes, lack of ethnic variability, and restrictions of memory check. Future research could conduct a longitudinal study to further discover the effects of desensitization on viewers to violent and sexual commercial material and its impact of product memory formation.
References
Bushman, B. J., & Bonacci, A. M. (2002). Violence and sex impair memory for television ads. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(3), 557-564. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.87.3.557
Ferguson, C. J., Cruz, A. M., Martinez, D., Rueda, S. M., & Ferguson, D. E. (2010). Violence and sex as advertising strategies in television commercials. European Psychologist, 15(4), 304-311. doi:10.1027/1016-9040/a000016
Fried, C. and Johanson, J. (2008). Sexual and violent media’s inhibition of advertisement memory: Effect or artifact? Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38(7), 1716-1735. doi: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2008.00366.x
Method
Research Design
We used a within-subjects experimental design to better maintain internal validity by reducing individual differences between participants experiencing the multiple conditions.
Participants
Our sample contained forty undergraduate college students currently attending Washington State University Tri-Cities campus (28 women, 10 men, 2 did not disclose, Mage = 22.85, age range: 18-28 years) were recruited using the SONA system. Our participants consisted of various different ethnicities; 19 of our participants were Hispanic, 14 were Caucasian, 2 were Asian American, 1 participant was East Indian American, and 1 participant was African American (3 participants did not disclose their ethnicity).
Materials and Measures
Six sexual, violent, and neutral television commercials (2 commercials for each section) and one additional video (a four minute and fourteen second long cat video) were shown to the participants of each study session. Two different questionnaires were used to measure the effects of sexual and violent commercials on viewers, an Affective Measurement Questionnaire (AMQ) and a Memory Recall Sheet (MRS). Screen shots of commercials viewed by participants are also used later in the study when participants were filling out the MRS.