Page 306 - The Social Animal

288 The Social Animal

violence sells products.The irony is that this is probably not the case.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting that violent shows are un-
popular. The average American might complain about all that
violence on TV, but he also seems to enjoy watching it.True enough.
But that does not necessarily mean that violence sells. After all, the
goal of advertising is not simply to get a lot of people to tune in to
the ad; the ultimate goal of advertising is to present the product in
such a way that the public will end up purchasing that product over
a prolonged period. What if it turns out that certain kinds of shows
produce so much mental turmoil that the sponsor’s product is soon
forgotten? If people cannot remember the name of the product, see-
ing the show will not lead them to buy it. And research has shown
that both sex and violence can be so distracting, that they cause view-
ers to be less attentive to the product being advertised.
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For example, Brad Bushman and Angelica Bonacci got people
to watch TV shows that were violent, sexually explicit, or neutral.
Each of the shows contained the same nine ads. Immediately after
seeing the show, the viewers were asked to recall the brands and to
pick them out from photos of supermarket shelves. Twenty-four
hours later, they were telephoned and asked to recall the brands they
had seen during the viewing. It turns out that the people who saw
the ads during the viewing of a neutral (nonviolent, non–sexually ex-
plicit) show were able to recall the advertised brands better than the
people who saw the violent show or the sexually explicit show. This
was true both immediately after viewing and 24 hours after viewing
and was true for both men and women of all ages. It seems that vi-
olence and sex impair the memory of viewers. In terms of sales, ad-
vertisers might be well advised to sponsor nonviolent shows.

Aggression to Attract Public Attention After the 1992 riots in
south central Los Angeles, the president of the United States indi-
cated that he was deeply concerned and that he would provide federal
aid and would create jobs for the unemployed. Do you think he would
have placed such a high priority on the jobless in that area if there had
been no riot? In a complex and apathetic society like ours, aggressive
behavior may be the most dramatic way for an oppressed minority to
attract the attention of the powerful majority. No one can deny that,
over the years, the effects of riots in Watts, Detroit, and south central
Los Angeles served to alert a large number of decent but apathetic
people to the plight of ethnic and racial minorities in the United