Advertising/Gender Differences

I’m sorry that I didn’t write this post earlier because I was in Poland, but better late than never :)
Last week, we were talking about gender differences. It's really interesting!
We were watching some adverts and tried to remember as many as it was possible. As it turned out, the most recognizable averts were: Nissan, Beyonce fragrance, Nike, Gillette, Paco Rabanne and Lacoste. However, boys memorized shoes, car or beer adverts whilst girls rather fragrance adverts.



The reason why we chose these adverts is that we often pay attention to:

* words in the middle of the picture
* shining/contrast colours
(women show a distinct preference for more color and graphics)
* celebrities
* atmosphere of happiness and fun
* pale pink as a background (it is typical for girls)
* animals


We noticed that some adverts are too dark or they have nothing in the middle, e.g. SLATE advert.


"The human brain, like the human body, is sexed, and differences in the sex-specific human brain condition a wide range of behaviors that we typically associate with maleness or femaleness."(Robert Nadeau, 1997)



As I read in the article which Ruth gave us last lesson, there are two specific effects: primacy and recency. Females exhibit more primacy effects whilst males exhibit more recency effects. It means that women memorize, for example, advertisements which are placed at the beginning of the newspaper and men inversely. Understanding how persuasion occurs across gender lines is very important for advertising agencies.

Finally, some stereotypes:)

According to Niedenthal et al.:

* Women are more emotionally expressive.
* Women are more emotionally responsive.
* Women are more empathetic.
* Women are more sensitive to others' feelings.
* Women are more obsessed with having children.
* Women express their feelings without constraint, except for the emotion of anger.
* Women pay more attention to body language.
* Women better judge emotions from nonverbal communication.
* Women express more love, fear, and sadness.
* Women laugh, gaze, and smile more.
* Women anticipate negative consequences for expressing anger and aggression.
* Men are overwhelmed by women's expressions of emotion.
* Men express more anger.
* Men control their feelings.
* Men restrain from expressing their feelings.
* Men are stoic.
* Men show emotion to communicate dominance.



If you would like to read about gender differences read this article: http://www.narth.com/docs/york.html