Most Obvious Study Result Award

Jan 31st, 2011

FOXNews' Megyn Kelly

Women are used as objects in broadcasting to sell men lousy beer, to sell one another little "massager" devices and according to a recent Indiana University study by Maria Elizabeth Grabe and Elizabeth Sampson, to essentially make male viewers less receptive to detail oriented news and complicated information structures. FOX... we're looking at you.

Last week, Miller McCune reported on the methodology of the Grabe/Sampson Study:

"They created two versions of their own short newscast, both of which featured the same 24-year-old female anchor.

For the first version, the broadcast journalist “was dressed in a tight-fitting dark blue jacket and skirt that accented her waist-to-hip ratio,” they write. “She also wore bright red lipstick and a necklace.” For the alternate version, she was dressed in “a shapeless and loose-fitting dark blue jacket and skirt,” and wore no lipstick or necklace.

“The anchorwoman was framed in a medium-long shot to reveal her upper body, including her upper thighs, waist and hips,” the researchers note. “The news stories were about local matters, including United Way fundraising, interest rate changes for federal loan programs” and the like.

The just under 400 participants were randomly assigned to watch one version or the other. All then filled out questionnaires summarizing their impressions of the reporter. They were also asked four multiple-choice questions about her physical appearance, and 10 multiple-choice questions about the content of the five stories she presented."

From their report in the magazine Communication Research:

"Male participants saw the sexualized version of the anchor as less suited for war and political reporting. They also encoded less news information presented by the sexualized than her unsexualized version. Conclusions were drawn in line with evolutionary psychology expectations of men’s cognitive susceptibility to visual sex cues. Women participants, on the other hand, did not vary across conditions in their assessments of the anchor’s competence to report on war and political news. Moreover, they encoded more news information presented by the sexualized than unsexualized anchor condition."

In an ironic turn of events, Tucker Carlson's increasingly low-rent rag, The Daily Caller, "reported" on the findings by confirming them:

"In the words of Antoine Dodson, “hide your wife,” at least if she happens to be a television anchor."

I will go out an limb here at the risk of alienating some of my female contributors and readers. When I look at the photo of FOXNews' Megyn Kelly (above left) I am NOT thinking about politics.