Sex and Violence in “Advertising and Memory” by Bushman & Phillips

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Research Design
Differences between Literature Review and Meta-Analysis
Future Hypotheses
Conclusion
References

Introduction

“Advertising and memory” explains the effect of advertising concerning memory in terms of sexual and violent images in advertising. The purpose of this article was to analyze the effectiveness of advertisement concerning the memorization of advertisement messages among the viewers. The research problem revolved around the constant targeting of young people by advertisers through commercials. Advertising has been a constant feature among marketers who want to pass a certain message or entice a given market segment to its products or services (Bushman & Phillips, 2001).

Considering the widespread extensiveness of television in most households and the constant use of advertisements in most television programs, it was necessary to establish the effectiveness of these advertisements on the memory of consumers. This came out of the analysis that advertisements were useless if the target audience were not to remember the advertisement message. Sex and violence being the common basis for most advertisement campaigns today was used as the variables to determining the “sticky” aspect of advertisement messages. The study, therefore, proposed to analyze the ability to memorize advertisement campaigns with sex and violent images as opposed to neutral advertisements (Bushman & Bonacci, 2002).

This study, therefore, revolved around the research question of whether sex and violence affect the ability to memorize advertisements. The hypotheses tested were that sex and violence reduce the ability to memorize advertisement campaigns and that neutral campaigns increased the potential to memorize advertisement messages. The study, therefore, revolved around these two determinants as the epicentre of the entire research process.

Research Design

“Advertising and memory” was qualitative because it sought to analyze the ability to memorize the advertisement campaigns on the respondents. Moreover, respondents were exposed to various advertisements and required to rate them in terms of their sexual arousal ability, boredom, level of involvement and level of violence (Bushman & Bonacci, 2002). All these features are qualitative. Respondents were also interviewed after a couple of hours of being subjected to the advertisements and also after being probed on whether they remembered the advertisement messages or not. This was the basis on which the conclusion was formulated because it was established that advertisement campaigns that had sexual images and traces of violence were less likely to stick than neutral advertisements.

Differences between Literature Review and Meta-Analysis

Regardless of the type of research one is to undertake, the literature review part must always be completed. The literature review is distinct from meta-analysis, in that, it provides information regarding a research study that has been done before. Literature reviews are also set to provide the direction in which given or future research studies are to follow (Egger, 1997).

In conducting a literature review, the researcher is mainly expected to synthesize the information obtained. Inevitably, this is a daunting task because one is usually faced with varied research findings that seemingly don’t propose one conclusion. This usually occurs because different research studies incorporate different methods and procedures before arriving at their conclusions. Some researchers have identified that literature review could be an independent research study of its own; instead of just being a chapter in a research proposal. In these types of studies, literature reviews have been known to follow and synthesize specific patterns of logical and systematic studies that are expected of any research study (Egger, 1997).

However, meta-analysis comes in to rectify the inaccuracy of the literature review because literature reviews have in the past been noted to rely more upon the interpretations of the authors (Egger, 1997). Although literature reviews have been noted to follow systematic patterns of data analysis and logical interpretation of information, author interpretations expose the analysis to personal biases. This, therefore, brings about a methodological problem.

The meta-analysis, therefore, overcomes the inherent limitations that are a characteristic of traditional kinds of literature. Meta-analysis relies on quantitative methods of data analysis to effectively review a given piece of literature. The meta-analysis is instinctively different from the literature review because it seeks to explain how the given data was obtained. In other words, instead of only analyzing the conclusions and discussions, it analyzes how these discussions were formulated. The results are also analyzed using statistical tools such as graphs, pie charts or tables. The meta-analysis, therefore, has certain steps that are clearly defined which are majorly set to analyze the results of different findings such that they are set in common parameters (Mantel, 1959).

Future Hypotheses

As regards the Bushman and Philips research, several hypotheses should be analyzed in future. These include:

Repeated voting improves the ability to memorize advertisements
Lengthy advertisements increase the ability to memorize advertisements

Conclusion

This article review is a comprehensive analogy of the effects of sex and violence in the ability to memorize advertisement messages. It is quite evident from the study that neutral advertisements are more easily memorized than advertisements that are laced with traces of sex and violence. This is because of the sole fact that these two factors distort the advertisement message.

References

Bushman, B., & Phillips, B. (2001). Ingenta Connect If the Television Program Bleeds. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10(2), 43-47.

Bushman, B., & Bonacci, A. (2002). Violence and Sex Impair Memory for Television Ads. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(3), 557–564.

Egger, M. (1997). Meta-Analysis. Potentials and Promise. BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.) 315(7119), 1371–1374.

Mantel, N. (1959). Statistical Aspects of the Analysis of Data from the Retrospective Analysis of Disease. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 22(4), 719–748.

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