Name: Tan Jia Yi

ID no: 0319476

Course code: PSY30203

Title: Assignment 1: Second Individual Journal

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

because people may assume that the image of women which shown in the advertisement is what

a woman should be.