Looking through Gendered Lenses: Female Stereotyping in Advertisements and Gender Role Expectations

Abstract

This study applied cognitive heuristics theory to the study of gender role stereotyping. Seventy-five high school students viewed magazine advertisements with stereotypical images of women, while fifty others viewed nonstereotypical images. Both groups then responded to statements concerning a woman in a “neutral” photograph. Differences in gender role expectations were found for six of the twelve questionnaire statements, although differences were not consistently related to either gender or experimental treatment. While the effects documented in this experiment were not dramatic, the results provide further evidence that even brief exposure to stereotypical advertisements plays a role in reinforcing stereotypes about gender roles and that what Sandra Bem has described as the lenses of gender lead to differences in the ways males and females cognitively process visual advertising images.