I don’t claim to know the answer to the title question, so if you were hoping to have it answered right here and now, I am sorry to have lured you in with my overtly sexualized interrogative. I really don’t mean to be an epistemic tease. At any rate, I recently came across this blogpost at Skepchick promoting a study at PLOS ONE which had been shared yesterday in a public Facebook post and between the three, I’ve been mulling over the proper skeptical response.
After reading all that, and staring at a batch of photos, I am left with at least three questions.
1) Why wasn’t there any control group?
The originator of Facebook thread argued against the need for a control group as follows, “If a study discovers that zinc works better on colds than vitamin C, the question ‘BUT WHAT IF VITAMIN C WORKS BETTER THAN NOTHING?’ is a fine question but outside the scope of the study.” The problem with this approach is that you cannot know, at the end of the day, whether both treatments worked better than nothing at all, or whether they both backfired, you can only say which one worked better than the other. A well-designed study would compare each of these treatments against a placebo control group, rather than merely against one another. A somewhat less well-designed study would at least establish a baseline at the beginning as to the dependent variable of interest, in this case, the extent to which the test subject already supports PETA.
2) Why wasn’t selective attention included as a variable?
The reason that “sex sells” is thought to be true is that we are constantly bombarded by messages from all sides, and only a few of them manage to capture our attention at all. One of the commenters on the Facebook thread did a fine job of describing this problem, “In the real world, non-sexy ads may not succeed at reaching anyone to communicate the message in the first place. People tune out, mute, close, fast forward through ads constantly. If the study doesn’t allow for people to choose which ad they want to spend time with, the data isn’t really useful.”
3) Why wasn’t subject attention span included as a variable?
Once the target of an advertisment has been drawn thereto, the ad must capture his or her attention long enough to alter their perception of the product. The study does not allow for subject attention to wander, a problem which was also noted in the Facebook thread, “Forcing equal time spent with both [sexy and non-sexy ads] renders the study useless in the context of consumer choice. This study proves a type of messaging to be better than another, but it does not prove it in the context of real advertising environments.”
It is entirely possible that I have misinterpreted the results of this study, and I welcome correction from anyone familiar with this topic. Unless that is forthcoming and persuasive, I must remain skeptical of those who are boldy proclaiming that “sex doesn’t sell.”
