 The Imaginary Intrasexual Competition: Advertisements Featuring Provocative Female Models Trigger Women to Engage in Indirect AggressionSylvie Borau and
Jean-François Bonnefon
Post-Print from HAL Abstract: Recent research suggests that women react to idealized female models in advertising as they would react to real-life sexual rivals. Across four studies, we investigate the negative consequences of this imaginary competition on consumers' mate-guarding jealousy, indirect aggression, and drive for thinness. A meta-analysis of studies 1–3 shows that women exposed to an idealized model report more mate-guarding jealousy and show increased indirect aggression (i.e., derogation and social exclusion), but do not report a higher desire for thinness. Study 4 replicates these findings and reveals that the main driver of aggression is the sexually provocative attitude of the model (a signal of a flirting behavior and of sexual availability), rather than her thin body size. The ethical implications of these findings for advertising are discussed in light of recent concerns about female bullying, online, and in the workplace Keywords: Advertising models"; " Derogation "; " Intrasexual competition"; " Mate-guarding jealousy"; Provocative attitude"; " Slut-shaming (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in Journal of Business Ethics, 2017, online, ⟨10.1007/s10551-017-3643-y⟩ There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01698409 DOI: 10.1007/s10551-017-3643-y Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Post-Print from HAL |
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