Women Hate Sexy Ads, Unless They’re for Something Expensive

TIME:

Women are turned off by sexually explicit images in advertisements. Unless, that is, the item being advertised is very precious. And valuable. And rare. Like, maybe, a once a year type gift.

At least, that’s the findings of a new study by an international group of marketing professors. Kathleen D. Vohs, Jaideep Sengupta and Darren W. Dahl used made-up advertisements for watches to test a theory in sexual economics that women want sex to be seen as something special, or at least not cheap.  Sexual economic theory  is “probably the least romantic theory about sex you’ll ever have learned,” says Vohs, who’s  a researcher at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. “Countries, cultures, and individuals treat female sexuality as if it has value and is precious.”

Her team showed men and women different wristwatch ads—some with a saucy image, others with a majestic mountain range. In some  of the ads the watch was priced at $10 and others at $1,250.

Before they viewed the ads, the participants had to memorize a 10-digit code. This was to try to distract them and not have them overthink their reaction to the watch marketing material. After reciting the code, the participants were asked how they felt about the ads.

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