When sex doesn’t sell to men: mortality salience, disgust and the appeal of products and advertisements featuring sexualized women

Although men typically hold favorable views of advertisements featuring female sexuality, from a Terror Management Theory perspective, this should be less the case when thoughts of human mortality are salient. Two experiments conducted in South Korea supported this hypothesis across a variety of pro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Motivation and emotion 2017-08, Vol.41 (4), p.478-491
Main Authors: Lee, Seon Min, Heflick, Nathan A., Park, Joon Woo, Kim, Heeyoung, Koo, Jieun, Chun, Seungwoo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Advertisements
Attitudes
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Clinical Psychology
Cultural differences
Death & dying
Death awareness
Disgust
Marketing
Mortality
Original Paper
Perfume
Personality and Social Psychology
Psychology
Sexuality
Sexualization
Terror management theory
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Summary:Although men typically hold favorable views of advertisements featuring female sexuality, from a Terror Management Theory perspective, this should be less the case when thoughts of human mortality are salient. Two experiments conducted in South Korea supported this hypothesis across a variety of products (e.g., perfume and vodka). Men became more negative towards advertisements featuring female sexuality, and had reduced purchase intentions for those products, after thinking about their own mortality. Study 2 found that these effects were mediated by heightened disgust. Mortality thoughts did not impact women in either study. These findings uniquely demonstrate that thoughts of death interact with female sex-appeal to influence men’s consumer choices, and that disgust mediates these processes. Implications for the role of emotion, and cultural differences, in terror management, for attitudes toward female sexuality, and for marketing strategies are discussed.
ISSN:0146-7239
1573-6644
DOI:10.1007/s11031-017-9615-9