Social Science

Prompt: Your second course project is an observation journal. You have already gathered your advertisements and completed your comparison template to determine the social science approaches that are relevant to your ads. For this assignment you will use that information to write an observation journal that will ask you to draw conclusions from the ads and, eventually, devise a social science question that you might like to investigate.

The critical elements of this assessment will be evaluated in your observation journal. Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed and will be graded using the rubric at the end of this document:

I. Explain why you chose these advertisements for social scientific and personal study. For instance, what aspects of them intrigued you and made you curious?

II. Explain the assumptions and observations about human interactions and behaviors you made about the advertisements. These are some questions you might want to consider in your explanation:

a. Who do you believe the audiences for the ads might be?

b. What messages do you think the ads are sending?

c. What do you think the nature of the relationship is between or among the people in theads?

d. What relationship(s) do you see between or among the people and the product or service being advertised?

e. How effective are the ads in influencing your own consumer decisions?

III. Identify topics in this course that are relevant to the human behaviors in your advertisements and explain how they are relevant. This is your social science evidence for your observations. For instance, what ideas and people have you studied so far that apply to your observations?

IV. Taking all of your observations and objective conclusions about human behavior in your advertisements into account, assume the role of a social scientist. What question would you ask about the advertisements that you, as a social scientist, could seek to answer? What observations and objective conclusions lead you to this question?

PLEASE REFER TO THE 3 ATTACHMENTS

1ST ATTACHMENT: Advertisement of ads that were chosen to do this project.

2Nd ATTACHMENT: Answers to the questions that are being asked. (about chosen ads)

3Rd ATTACHMENT: Example how the assignment should look.

SCS 100 Theme 1: Advertisement Examples

You will need to identify four advertisements to support your work on the Comparison Template, which is due at the end
of Theme 1, and the Observation Journal, which is due at the end of Theme 2. The list below provides a number of
examples of advertisements you can use to support these assignments. The ads are grouped by the type of product or
service they are promoting, as it can be helpful to compare different themes or trends used across similar products. Feel
free to use any of the ads from the list below, to select ads across product or service type, or to select your own using
the selection criteria at the end of this document. Note that video ads featured through the Ads of the World website
may require viewing in Chrome or Firefox.

Product/Service: Health And Beauty

Advertisement Ad Type

Diaderm Anti-Wrinkle Cream

Infusium 23 Hair Products

Revlon: Charlie Print

Corega Denture Bond Print

Garnier: Hide Yesterday Print

Colgate: Sinkchild (0:31)

Video

Loreal: The Waterproof Experience (1:44) Video

Product/Service: House And Home

Advertisement Ad Type

Whirlpool: Finding Time Transcript (0:31) Video
Initial: How Clean are Your Bathrooms Print

Tide Plus A Touch of Downy: The Princess Dress (0:30) Video

IKEA: One Room Paradise (2:30) Video

Schlage Locks: Ex-Girlfriend (0:30) Video

Coldwell Banker Real Estate: Home’s Best Friend
(1:00)

Video

Tramontina: Meat Signature Iron (1:52) Video

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/diadermine_wrinkle_expert_the_couple

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/infusium_23_miracle

http://www.advertisingarchives.co.uk/en/asset/show_zoom_window_popup.html?asset=20176&amp%3Bamp%3Blocation=grid&amp%3Bamp%3Basset_list=16423%2C3700%2C46792%2C44871%2C41885%2C40005%2C30225%2C29167%2C28937%2C27821%2C25343%2C22894%2C22077%2C21108%2C20668%2C20176%2C11984%2C8297%2C6989%2C1306&amp%3Bamp%3Bbasket_item_id=undefined

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/corega_couple

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/garnier_hide_yesterday_meet_the_parents

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/ambient/loreal_the_waterproof_experience

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/initial_how_clean_are_your_bathrooms_1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g06odPKwGrg%20

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/online/tramontina_meat_signature_iron

Product/Service: Alcohol and Tobacco

Advertisement Ad Type

Carlsberg Beer: If Carlsberg Did Fitting Rooms (0:30) Video

Borsodi Beer: Counter Print

V2O Pure Grain Vodka: Phone Print

Polevskaya Varnya: Hangover is Over (0:57) Video

OCB: Stick it Up Print
1960s Camel: Where a Man Belongs Print

Product/Service: Food & Beverage

Advertisement Ad Type
Farmer Cereal Bars: Instant Energy, 2 Print

Airwaves Gum: Bus Print
Carl’s Jr.: Au Natural (0:52) Video

Milio’s Sandwiches: Astronaut Print

Pizza Planet: California Meat Print

Coca-Cola: Battlefield (1:02) Video

Spoleto Restaurant: Beautiful Women Don’t Pay
(1:48)

Video

Product/Service: Cars and Transportation

Advertisement Ad Type

Land Rover: Maasai Tribe Print

Volkswagen TDI Clean Diesel: Mom (0:45) Video

Chariot India Print

Official Ram Trucks Super Bowl Commercial: “Farmer”
(2:02)

Video

Volkswagen: The Uber test ride (1:53) Video

Lekker Bicycles: Model, 2
(There are three different models, you can view the
other two below the advertisement on this page)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZd_O-7s_sQ

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/borsodi_counter

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/v2o_pure_grain_vodka_phone

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/online/polevskaya_varnya_hangover_is_over

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/ocb_stick_it_up

http://www.advertisingarchives.co.uk/en/asset/show_zoom_window_popup.html?asset=87523092&amp%3Bamp%3Blocation=grid&amp%3Bamp%3Basset_list=87523411%2C87523103%2C87523092%2C87523090%2C87522710%2C87522676%2C87522526%2C87522359%2C87522314%2C87522171%2C87522138%2C87521610%2C87521561%2C87521057%2C87521056%2C87521048%2C87521047%2C87521046%2C87521045%2C87521044%2C87521043%2C87521042%2C87520940%2C87520846%2C87520656%2C87520413%2C87520340%2C87520328%2C87520324%2C87520193%2C87520190%2C87520180%2C87520176%2C87520151%2C87520144%2C87520086%2C87520085%2C87519893%2C87519449%2C87519409%2C87519392%2C87519194%2C87519030%2C87518713%2C8751

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/farmer_cereal_bars_instant_energy_2

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/airwaves_gum_bus

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/milios_sandwiches_astronaut

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/pizza_planet_california_meat

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/tv/cocacola_battlefield

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/ambient/spoleto_restaurant_beautiful_women_dont_pay

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/land_rover_maasai

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3z6sclsFdc&amp%3Bamp%3Bfeature=youtu.be

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/chariot_india_football_riot

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/lekker_bicycles_model_2

Product/Service: Social Services and Causes

Advertisement Ad Type

Woman’s Room: Stand Strong (an ad from the
Croatian Rugby Association)

IP Casinos: Mammograms and Margaritas: Breast
Cancer Support

Chilean Red Cross: Earthquake (1:04) Video
Hospital Austral Print

Texas Department of State Health Services: Shhhh
(0:31)

Video

Bureau of Civil Affairs: T-Shirt Design for Orphans Print

Qatar Cancer Society: Generosity Is Its Own Reward
(2:00)

Video

Ad Selection Criteria

If you would like to select your own ads, use the criteria below. The ads you select should:

 Be interesting to you
 Feature people, not simply products
 Display interactions between people or convey ways that the product or service advertised will impact or influence

people

 Encourage you to ask questions about the ads, the people in them, or the approach used in the ad

 Enable you to ask questions about:

o The individuals in the ads
o The groups portrayed in the ads
o Culture or cultural representations included (or not included) in the ads

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/womans_room_stand_strong

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/ip_casino_mammograms_margaritas

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/radio/chilean_red_cross_earthquake

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/hospital_austral_family_plan_tabasco

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/tv/texas_department_of_state_health_services_shhhh

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/ambient/bureau_of_civil_affairs_tshirt_design_for_orphans

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/tv/qatar_cancer_society_generosity_is_its_own_reward

Brittaney Allen

Southern New Hampshire University

1/21/2018

SCS 100 Theme 1: Comparison Template

Ad 1: Infusium 23 Hair Products	Ad 2: Woman’s Room: Stand Strong	Ad 3: Pizza Planet: California Meat	Ad 4: V2O Pure Grain Vodka: Phone
1. Question(s) related to how individuals are represented in the ads	Why is the model a white female? Why are men included in the ad? What is the reason behind the choice other attire?	Whom does the rugby player signify?	What is the significance of all the ornaments that have been put on by the man?	What does the lady and the gentle man imply we they look at one another?
2. Questions related to how groups and group behavior are represented in the ad	Why is it that all of them stare at her hair and not her attire?	What is the significance of the rugby player diving onto the other man?	Why does the man have his body marked?	Why is the implication of the place they are sitting at?
3. Questions related to how culture and cultural identity are represented (or not represented) in the ad	Why is it that whereas in offices decent dressing code is required, the candidate puts on “indecently” while entering the office?	What is the relationship between the rugby player and protecting women against violence?	How does the man represent the pizza lovers?	What does “losing more than the phone” signify in the current culture?
4. How do the ads compare to each other?	All of the ads illustrate wellness and healthy. Three of the ads feature women products and women desires while one features diversity in the culture (pizza). One of the ads implies human rights and the role of all human beings to safeguard human rights.
5. What overall observations might a social scientist be interested in studying in relation to the themes present in these advertisements? What larger questions about human interactions might they ask?	Social scientists would want to observe the impact of the ads to the men and women. They would also want to understand the relationship between featuring a woman only or a man only or both in an ad. They would also want to understand leads to women behaving they way they have been featured and what are the circumstances. Questions would be: How does the look and feel of the hair, fear and desire influence the women? How do the ads change the behavior of me towards the female gender? How does the public view the scenes depicted in the ads?

SCS 100 Theme 2: Project 2 Exemplar

Article Choice

I chose the advertisements that I did because I was interested in how they related gender to

food. Each advertisement is marketing a certain food: gelato, candy bars, or ice cream. Each

advertisement depicts either females alone or females in specific gender roles. I was also

intrigued by the advertisements because I am female and I enjoy eating chocolate. When I have

had a hard day I enjoy coming home and indulging in dessert to comfort myself. Some of the

advertisements portray women as having a desire for sweets, which made me question my own

tendency to desire sweet foods after a hard day at work.

Assumptions and Observations

Audience. Each advertisement has a specific audience to which it appeals. Each

advertisement depicts mostly white actors and actresses. The intended audience of these

advertisements are people who use food as reward. The audience for these advertisements

would most likely be people from a westernized civilization who have excess food to use for

pleasure or reward. For example, people who live in countries where there is not easy access to

plentiful amounts of food would not have the same relationship to food as the people depicted in

these advertisements. There are other aspects of the advertisements that make me think the

intended audience is white and westernized. For example, the marriage in the Milky Way

advertisement appears to be a traditional Christian wedding, based on the presence of a priest

and the decoration of the church. The Freddo Ice Cream advertisement depicts children, all of

them white, and represents a democracy in which people are elected to government positions.

The Celebration advertisement is also showing individuals—all of whom are also white—who

again are using food as a way of celebrating. Finally, the Antonio Federici advertisement is

depicting a white nun being sinful by eating chocolate, which again seems to be portraying a

relationship between indulgence and food. I believe the relationship of food as indulgence is a

more westernized and privileged notion. Based on my observations, I believe the intended

audience for most of these advertisements are middle-class, white women.

Message. The message the advertisements are sending all seem to be about the

relationship between people and food. For the Federici advertisement, the message is that

women use rich, sweet food for indulgence and as a “guilty pleasure.” The advertisement even

seems to relate the indulgence of this sweet food with sin by showing a nun who is pregnant.

The Freddo Ice Cream advertisement is also showing a relationship between food and people.

In this advertisement, I observed that the girls are the ones serving food, while the boy is the

one running for office. This advertisement seems to portray a stereotype of women serving

men. It also is showing a relationship between women being the ones to handle the serving and

maybe even the preparation of food. The Celebration advertisement’s message again appears to

show a relationship between women celebrating with food. The ad even shows the girls

celebrating other’s misfortune, thereby seeming to portray females as selfish. The Milky Way

advertisement also depicts a woman as being selfish by indulging in chocolate, which makes

her late for her own wedding. A common message is showing gender stereotypes as they relate

to women and food.

Relationship between people. I believe that in most of these advertisements, the most

important relationship depicted between people is the relationship between sinful females and

others. For example, in the Antonio Federici advertisement, one thinks of an innocent nun who

has sinned. Females are supposed to be innocent and this advertisement taps into the hidden

desires of females. I believe these advertisements also show women as weak compared to their

desires; for example, the women in the Celebration advertisement care only about winning and

do not care about their injured competitor. Although the Freddo Ice Cream advertisement

depicts a different type of gender stereotype, it is still important. The Freddo advertisement

shows females serving males and acting in less important or secondary roles. The relationship

between genders is the most important relationship I observe in these advertisements.

Relationship with product. In each of the advertisements, the relationship that I chose

to focus on is the relationship between women and food. The Freddo Ice Cream advertisement

shows females in the traditional secondary role of serving and preparing food, while the male is

in the primary role of running for office. The other three advertisements all portray women as

being selfish and indulgent when they engage in eating sweet food. The relationship is that a

woman cannot help herself and indulges in the guilty pleasure of a sweet food.

Effectiveness. For me, the least effective advertisement is the Celebration

advertisement, because it depicts females acting in an obviously selfish way by showing them

celebrating when their competitor is injured. The Milky Way advertisement also shows a

woman acting selfishly, but the ad does it in a less obvious way; the consequence of her selfish

behavior is not celebrating another person getting hurt, but that people have to wait for her

wedding. Therefore, the Milky Way advertisement is more effective than the Celebration

advertisement. I also believe the obviousness of the message impacts the effectiveness of the

Antonio Federici advertisement, because if the nun were not pregnant, the message of indulging

and being sinful would be less obvious, and would therefore be more effective for me. Finally,

the Freddo Ice Cream advertisement very obviously depicts stereotypical gender roles; for me,

it is hard to look past that and focus on the product. Overall, the advertisements that make a less

obvious attempt at getting their message across seem to be the most effective.

Social Science Evidence

To back up my observations about the relationship between women and food, which in these

advertisements I observed to represent gender stereotypes of women in servile roles and as

being weak and unable to resist their desires, I looked for evidence within the course so far.

My interest in the portrayal of the women in these advertisements seems to fit both within the

psychological and sociological fields. In Theme 1, we learned that gender stereotypes can be

examined through the idea of the “social construction” of these topics, meaning that society

creates and reinforces the category of gender. In Theme 1, we learned that psychology is the

study of the mind and behavior (American Psychological Association, n.d.) and even though

gender roles may be socially constructed, the behavior of engaging in those gender roles is

very interesting to me.

We learned about perception in Theme 2. Perception plays a big role in these advertisements

because it helps to explain why we perceive what we do from these advertisements. The halo

effect is described as “a bias in which our overall impression of a person (a figurative halo)

colors our judgments of that person’s character” (Baumann Foundation, 2013). The halo effect

comes into play in multiple advertisements. For example, in the Antonio Federici

advertisement, we see a nun who has sinned and we start to make assumptions about all the

other choices in her life. We also do this with the Celebration and Milky Way advertisements.

The depiction of females choosing to indulge within the advertisements leaves the audience

making assumptions about the females’ overall weaknesses and tendency to give into their

desires. Confirmation bias can also be used to describe why we perceive what we do from these

advertisements. Confirmation bias is described as seeking and/or interpreting evidence in a way

that is congruent with one’s existing beliefs or expectations (Nickerson, 1998). Gender

stereotypes already exist; therefore, we are more likely to interpret the advertisements in line

with the gender stereotypes with which we are familiar. According to confirmation bias, we see

the Freddo Ice Cream advertisement as confirming societal gender stereotypes that women are

secondary to men. Even though these cognitive biases happen automatically, we learned in

Theme 2 that they influence our opinions and emotions about situations.

Question

The Theme 1 overview describes one of the big questions in psychology as “What motivates

individuals to act in certain ways?” I used this question, along with the evidence about cognitive

biases, to help inform my own question about gender stereotypes. I am also using my own

experiences because in my household I do more of the cleaning, while my husband does the

lawn work. These behaviors fit into stereotypical gender roles of women doing more of the

cleaning and cooking and men doing more of the yard work. Although my experience is

different than the gender stereotypes portrayed in the advertisements, these behaviors still fit

into the theme of gender stereotypes. I created a question a social scientist might ask using both

the information from the course and my own experiences. Based on this information, my social

science question is: How do cognitive biases influence our behaviors to adhere to gender

stereotypes?

References

American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Definition of psychology. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/about/

The Baumann Foundation. (2013). The halo effect: Why angels and devils walk the earth. Retrieved from

http://www.beinghuman.org/article/halo-effect

Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General

Psychology, 2(2), 175–220.

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