Gender Identity Salience and Perceived Vulnerability to Breast Cancer

Interviene: Stefano Puntoni, Rotterdam School of Management

Organizzato da: Dipartimento di Marketing

Abstract: Breast cancer is one of the most common tumors, killing half a million women every year. Saving lives through campaigns aimed at alerting women to their vulnerability to this disease is therefore an important goal of governments, health agencies, and charities. Given the central role breasts play in female gender identity, an important but hitherto overlooked issue is the influence of gender identity salience on perceived breast cancer risk. Contrary to the predictions of several prominent theoretical perspectives and a convenience sample of advertising executives, in a series of experiments we find that breast cancer communications that make women’s gender identity salient can trigger unconscious defense mechanisms and thereby interfere with key objectives of breast cancer campaigns.