Answered Questions

There are several ways to find helpful materials for you! First, you could search the library catalog to find books and eBooks on the topic. For example, try a search for your terms like sex AND advertising. (The AND is a Boolean search technique that lets the search engine know that you want only results with both terms.) You'll find relevant items like these:

Reichert, T., & Lambiase, J. (2006). Sex in consumer culture: The erotic content of media and marketing. Mahwah, N.J: L. Erlbaum Associates. BRENAU CALL NUMBER, MAIN HF5827.85 .S496 2006

Reichert, T., & Lambiase, J. (2003). Sex in advertising: Perspectives on the erotic appeal. Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. BRENAU E-BOOK.

For articles, start at the Psychology LibGuide. (http://libguides.brenau.edu/psychology) Click on the yellow Articles tab at the top of the page.

You'll see a list of several databases that include psychology materials. Click on one and search the database for articles! (For example, try PsychINFO.) After clicking the name of the database, you may need to log in with your Brenau username and password.

Type your terms in the search box, and try different combinations of terms with different synonyms. For example:

sex AND advertising (again using the Boolean AND to specify your search)

(sex NOT gender) AND advertising (The parentheses with the NOT between "sex" and "gender" tells the search engine that for that particular term, we specifically do not want items that discuss gender instead of sex. This reduces articles that discuss topics like gender roles in advertising, which can also show up if we do not make this specification.)

(sex NOT gender) AND "mass media" (Here, "mass media" is used in place of "advertising" because they are often used interchangeably. The phrase has quotation marks around it in the search because that tells the search engine to keep that particular phrase all together when it finds results.)

Use the options on the left side of your results to narrow your results further: check the boxes for Full Text (so you see only articles you can read right away) and Peer Reviewed (so each result is from a scholarly peer reviewed academic journal), and use the slider bar for Publication Date to make sure you are seeing recent articles (for example, the last five years). These searches will give you relevant articles like the following:

Ferguson, C. J., Cruz, A. M., Martinez, D., Rueda, S. M., & Ferguson, D. E. (2010). Violence and sex as advertising strategies in television commercials. European Psychologist, 15(4), 304-311.

Monk-Turner, E., Wren, K., McGill, L., Matthiae, C., Brown, S., & Brooks, D. (2008). Who is gazing at whom? A look at how sex is used in magazine advertisements. Journal Of Gender Studies, 17(3), 201-209.

Parker, E., & Furnham, A. (2007). Does sex sell? The effect of sexual programme content on the recall of sexual and non-sexual advertisements. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 21(9), 1217-1228.

When you are finished exploring one database, go back to the LibGuide and try another, like Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection, ScienceDirect, or Academic Search Complete. Each database is a unique collection of materials, so you will find different articles in different databases with the same search!