Masculinity and Cognitive Age Perception: An Examination of their Relationship and Implications for Advertising Persuasion

Abstract

This paper explores whether gender and sex role orientation, in terms of masculinity and femininity, may be associated with older cognitive age among young people. It predicts that masculinity should be associated with an older cognitive age. Two surveys (N=254 respondents aged 18– 22 years and N=327 respondents aged 18–55 years), conducted in Taiwan, generally support this prediction. Moreover, this study predicts that masculinity influences people’s responses to media information that contains age cues, such as ads featuring models of various ages. The findings of another experiment (N=141 respondents) in Taiwan show that young participants who are more masculine like relatively older models to a greater degree, and the degree to which they like the model influences their attitudes toward the advertised brand.