Graduation Year

2016

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Psychology

Second Department

Music

Reader 1

Jennifer Ma

Reader 2

Anne Harley

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2015 Ellen S Pelos

Abstract

This paper proposes a study that investigates whether manipulating pitch and tempo in children’s toy advertisement music has an effect on gender identity and sex stereotyping in preschool-aged girls. This particular intersection between advertisement, persuasion, gender identity, and sex stereotyping scholarship has not yet been explored. However, past research does suggest that high pitch and fast tempo have a significant positive impact on mood and arousal, two factors associated with more susceptibility to persuasive messages. The 3- to 4-year-old female participants will be randomly assigned to one of the nine advertisement conditions. The music in the ads for each condition will contain a combination of pitch variation (high, medium, or low pitch) as well as a tempo variation (fast, medium, or slow tempo) to create a fully-crossed design. The dependent variables, gender identity and sex stereotyping, will be measured in the lab before and after a 2-week period in which the the advertisement stimuli will be presented in the children’s homes. Based on previous research, higher pitch and faster tempo are expected to be associated with more stereotypical gender identity and more sex stereotyping in participants.

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