Feelings of pleasure, arousal, and dominance: men and women’s responses to athletic images in different types of sports

ABSTRACT

This experiment aimed to examine emotional responses to athletic images featuring male and female athletes in ‘gender-appropriate’, ‘gender-neutral’, and ‘gender-inappropriate’ sports. Recruiting 236 subjects, this research has complex findings. The findings include – that when viewing pictures featuring male athletes, female subjects reported a significantly higher level of pleasure and arousal compared to their male counterparts; that regarding affective responses to different types of sports, male subjects reported the lowest level of pleasure and arousal in viewing athletes competing in ‘gender-inappropriate’ sports and that when viewing pictures featuring athletes competing in ‘gender-inappropriate’ sports, female subjects reported a significantly higher level of pleasure, arousal, and dominance than their male counterparts. Possible explanations and implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Sport
• gender
• emotion
• SAM scales
• social dominance theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. It is acknowledged that some studies here report on sex differences and some on gender differences; the authors here have tried to be consistent while also reporting other studies as accurately as possible.

2. We controlled these variables to make sure that the significant results generated by this study were not caused by factors other than the ones we were studying.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Qingru Xu

Qingru Xu (Ph.D, University of Alabama) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Eastern Washington University. Dr. Xu’s research interests include sports media, gender, and nationality.

Andrew C. Billings

Andrew C. Billings (Ph.D, University of Indiana) is a Professor in the College of Communication & Information Sciences at the University of Alabama. Dr. Billings’ research interests include sports media consumption, sports culture, and identity.