Men absorb less information from sexy newscasters

Men are less likely to retain the information relayed to them by sexually attractive news anchors than those deemed less sexually attractive, new research says. Writing in the journal Communication Research, Indiana University telecommunications professor Maria Elizabeth Grabe and doctoral candidate Lelia Samson explored how the appearance of a female news anchor affects the audience of a news program. Grabe, a former journalist herself, recalls how in the 1980s female anchors weren’t sexualized the way they are today. Instead it was all about being “as androgynous as possible.” For their study, the researchers recruited 386 participants: 193 men and women. They used one news anchor (a 24-year-old brunette of “average” weight) and dressed her up in two different ways: as a sexualized anchor, giving her a fitted jacket and skirt to wear, and putting bright red lipstick on her and a necklace; and as an unsexualized anchor, wearing a shapeless, loose-fitting jacket, and no lipstick or necklace. The rest of the anchor’s appearance (hair, makeup, etc.) remained the same for both. She read the same five stories as the sexualized anchor and as the unsexualized anchor. Men were so affected by the physical characteristics of the sexualized anchor, they were unable to retain much of the information she relayed. Grabe and Samson were not surprised.