Emotion as a Mediator of the Influence of Gender on Advertising Effectiveness: Gender Differences in Online Self-Reports

This study featured a mixed-model repeated measures ANOVA design wherein subjects were exposed to three emotional and three nonemotional public service advertising appeals. The results showed that in online self-reporting situations where message recipients report on their emotions immediately after exposure to an affectively charged advertising appeal, women reported significantly stronger emotions than their male counterparts only in response to the three emotional ads. The findings also showed that even when individual differences in affect intensity were accounted for, emotion was clearly the factor that mediated the influence of gender on advertising effectiveness in all three emotional ads.