1. Name: Tan Jia Yi
ID no: 0319476
Course code: PSY30203
Title: Assignment 1: Second Individual Journal
2. The advertisement above was taken from newspaper “The Star”. It is promoting the
slimming products from SlimWorld Beauty House Sdn. Bhd. There are pictures of women with
slim body shape and well curved body in the advertisement. In this context, does anyone notice
that the advertisement reflects elements of social psychology concepts such as persuasion and
stereotyping?
There are two approaches to persuasion in advertising: rational and emotional, which
influence people’s attitudes or behaviors. Rational persuasion taps into consumers’ thinking side.
It tells them about the advantages of the products and why they should buy it. In this case, the
advertisement states that “guaranteed inches loss” to tell people that we can lose weight by using
the slimming product. Emotional advertising taps into consumer’s feeling side. It shows them the
benefits of the product through drama and relies on them being so involved with the characters
and finding the story so relevant that it will hit an emotional chord. This technique is used in this
advertisement through the pictures of the slim women and the slogan “now everyone can attain
beautiful curves” which are much more emotional to make people feel strongly about an idea.
In addition, this advertisement also reflects stereotyping, which is a fixed way of thinking
about people in which you classify others into specific categories without much room for
variations. Advertising creates a mythical world in which people are rarely ugly, overweight but
generally tall and attractive. In this advertisement, emphasis is laid on the physical beauty of the
women such as body features and body curves. The women in the advertisement are young,
beautiful and slim. The pervasiveness of such advertisements, together with the use of only thin
models all reinforce that the perception of beauty is still very conventional, slim is beautiful. In
this state of mind, dieting and beauty tells ordinary women that they are always in need of
adjustment and they will try to achieve the look as the model in advertisement at all costs. This is
3. because people may assume that the image of women which shown in the advertisement is what
a woman should be.
