Sexy news anchors distract male viewers: Study
By ANIThursday, January 27, 2011
WASHINGTON - Male viewers snap to attention at the sight of a female anchor they find attractive, but are distracted by her looks and therefore less likely to remember what she had to say, a new study from researchers at Indiana University has found.
“Men might want to reread the story in the newspaper,” AOL News quoted Maria Elizabeth Rabe, one of the study’s authors, as saying.
Rabe and her colleague Leila Samson wanted to see how sexy anchors affect men’s ability to retain the actual news, so they devised an experiment in which they asked hundreds of them to watch the same 24-year-old anchor deliver a broadcast twice-once dressed in modest attire and another time in something more revealing, complete with jewelry, makeup and cleavage.
The study found that men were more likely to closely watch the sexy anchors but less likely to remember what they said. So networks that hire attractive news anchors may get higher ratings but have less-informed male viewers as a result.
The study has been published online in the journal Communication Research. (ANI)
