How Does Gender Stereotype Affect the Memory of Advertisements? A Behavioral and Electroencephalography Study
Shih-Yu Lo1,2, Jung-Tai King3, Chin-Teng Lin4
1Institute of Communication Studies, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
Frontiers in Psychology
|August 9, 2020
Summary
Stereotype-incongruent advertisements are better remembered than congruent ones. This suggests that unusual or atypical information, like gender-stereotype-breaking ads, enhances memory encoding and recognition.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Marketing Research
Background:
- Memory research yields inconsistent results on whether unusual events aid or hinder recall.
- Previous studies may be confounded by participants using inference rather than true recall.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the effect of stereotype congruence on recognition memory.
- To explore the neural mechanisms underlying memory for typical versus atypical advertisements.
Main Methods:
- Behavioral experiments (Experiments 1 & 2) assessed recognition memory for real and fabricated advertisements.
- Advertisements varied in congruence with gender stereotypes (e.g., male endorser with masculine product vs. female endorser with masculine product).
- Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a recognition task (Experiment 3).
Main Results:
- Participants demonstrated significantly better memory performance for stereotype-incongruent advertisements compared to congruent ones.
- Event-related potential data showed larger positive amplitudes at left parietal sites for incongruent stimuli.
- These neural findings suggest deeper cognitive processing for stereotype-incongruent information.
Conclusions:
- Information that violates gender stereotypes enhances memory recognition.
- The brain processes stereotype-incongruent information more deeply, leading to improved memory recall.
- Findings clarify previous equivocal results by highlighting the role of stereotype congruence in memory.
