Music Videos and Perceptions of Women

The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether or not watching sexually explicit music videos will affect how different women are perceived in different situations. There were 301 subjects recruited from Old Dominion University. The mean age was 20.5 and there were 189 women and 111 men. The participants watched two music videos and rated the main performer in the music video. Next, they watched an interview video and rated the person in the interview. The interview video featured one woman who was either African-American or Caucasian, and that woman was interviewing for either a job or a potential date. The target people were rated using a list of22 adjectives on a Likert type scale ranging from 1-9. The experimental design was a 2x2x2. The manipulations were the type of music video (sexually explicit or positive) X the type of interview (job or date) X the ethnicity of the target woman (African-American or Caucasian). A MANOVA was used to analyze the data. It was discovered that watching sexually explicit music videos does not affect how either African American or Caucasian women are perceived in an interview situation. Interestingly, it was discovered that women interviewing for a potential date were perceived significantly less favorably than women interviewing for a job. Post hoc analyses revealed significant differences in responses based on the ethnicity and sex of the participant. This implies that future research should examine the effect of participant race and sex on perceptions of women after an experimental manipulation.