Sex DOES sell: Attractive men and women in ads affect our capacity for rational thought
Hot product: Our ability to make a rational decision is reduced by adverts using suggestive imagery, like this one for Head and Shoulders shampoo
Draping a model seductively over the product on sale has long been a ploy beloved of advertisers.
But now scientists claim they have discovered exactly why sex sells and it isnt just because consumers think that if they buy the car they can get the girl.
Researchers found seeing an attractive man or woman in an advert excites the areas of the brain that make us buy on impulse, bypassing the sections which control rational thought.
Their study found that adverts using logical persuasion (LP) - simple, convincing facts - are less effective in making us spend than adverts using non-rational influence (NI) - feelgood, stimulating images.
A good-looking woman standing with her legs apart to advertise jeans was found to have a stronger influence on us than, for example, a car ad containing miles-per-gallon data.
This is because NI bypasses the parts of our brain that process ideas logically and rationally.
Researchers from the University of California attached 24 adults to monitors that recorded brain activity during LP and NI adverts.
The rate of activity in the emotional processing and decision-making parts of the brain was much lower during the NI than the LP adverts.
An cigarette advert showing a woman jumping over a fire hydrant with a smiling man behind her was likely to reduce our ability to make a considered choice on whether to buy the product.
'Watch your brain and watch your wallet,' said UCLA's Dr Ian Cook, who publ! ished th e study results in the Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology and Economics.
Uninhibited: We are less likely to use the logical parts of our brain when confronted with images of attractive people, as in this ad for diamond company De Beers
'The lower levels of brain activity from ads employing NI images could lead to less behavioural inhibition, which could translate to less restraint when it comes to buying products depicted.
He added: 'The finding reinforces the hypothesis that preferences for purchasing goods and services may be shaped by many factors, including advertisements presenting logical, persuasive information and those employing images or text that may modify behaviour without requiring conscious recognition of a message.
'Viewing LP images was consistently linked with significantly higher activity levels in the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate regions, the amygdala, and the hippocampus, all areas of the brain involved in decision-making and/or emotional processing.
He added: 'In response to non-rational sensory inputs, activity was lower in areas of the brain that help us inhibit responses to stimuli.
'The findings support the conjecture that some advertisers wish to seduce, rather than persuade, consumers to buy their products.'
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