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

Seon Min Lee, Nathan A. Heflick, Joon Woo Park, Heeyoung Kim, Jieun Koo, Seungwoo Chun

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)478-491
Number of pages14
JournalMotivation and Emotion
Volume41
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Aug 2017

Keywords

  • Advertisements
  • Disgust
  • Mortality salience
  • Sex-appeal
  • Terror management

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