{"id":65168,"date":"2015-01-21T09:00:30","date_gmt":"2015-01-21T14:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=65168"},"modified":"2015-03-16T16:04:48","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T21:04:48","slug":"dog-movies-powerfully-influence-dog-ownership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/01\/21\/dog-movies-powerfully-influence-dog-ownership\/","title":{"rendered":"Dog Movies Powerfully Influence Dog Ownership"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most Americans, when asked if they are affected by advertising, will say \u201cnot really.\u201d\u00a0They think other<\/em> people are influenced by cultural messages, but that they are somehow immune.<\/p>\n

Whether people are shaped by the media they consume seems to be a perpetual question. The fact that billions of dollars are spent every year attempting to influence us is probably a sign that advertisers know it works. Scientists get in on the action, asking pressing questions\u00a0like: Do violent video games increase violence in real life? Do sexy, thin models hurt girls’ self-esteem? We do the studies and the answers are often inconclusive, probably because of how complicated the relationships\u00a0are.<\/p>\n

Psychologist Stefano Ghirlanda and his colleagues asked a slightly simpler question: Do celebrity dogs influence the popularity of dog breeds?\u00a0They looked at 100 movies with prominent dog characters from 1939 to 2003 and compared the release date to\u00a0breed registrations.\u00a0The answer seems to be: with the exception of box office flops, yes.<\/p>\n

\"2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Given that many\u00a0dog movies are made for kids, I’d be interested in the mediating role of parenthood. Companies that make children’s products like sugary cereal know that they can get the parent to buy their product if the\u00a0kid is\u00a0annoying enough about it. So, they market to children directly. I’d love to see if people with and without small children\u00a0were equally affected by the breed of dog in this year’s movie.<\/p>\n

The researchers method of popularity, moreover, was registration with the American Kennel Club. Pure bred dogs are expensive. So, I wonder if the power of these trends varies by social class. If a family\u00a0can’t afford a “Beethoven,” they\u00a0may be more likely to just adopt a mutt from a neighbor’s litter.<\/p>\n

In any case, though, this seems like incontrovertible evidence that we’re influenced by mass media. But you already knew everyone else was, didn’t you?<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most Americans, when asked if they are affected by advertising, will say \u201cnot really.\u201d\u00a0They think other people are influenced by cultural messages, but that they are somehow immune. Whether people are shaped by the media they consume seems to be a perpetual question. The fact that billions of dollars are spent every year attempting to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":65170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[155,229,15,129,23703,343],"class_list":["post-65168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-animals","tag-consumption","tag-culture","tag-media","tag-marketing","tag-tvmovies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/11\/39.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65172,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65168\/revisions\/65172"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}