Ryan Gosling Memes Study
A New Study Reveals The Surprising Effect Of Looking At Ryan Gosling Memes
Long Story Short
Looking at Ryan Gosling feminist memes increases feminist feelings in men, a new study has found.Long Story
Hey guy. A new psychology study has shown that looking at the 'Feminist Ryan Gosling' meme increases similar real feelings in men.Carried out by the psychology researchers at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, the experiment tested 99 students of both genders, and found that the increased effect in endorsing the belief was more dramatic in guys.
Speaking to CBC News, the PhD students who co-authored the study, Linzi Williamson and Sarah Sangster, theorise why men react strongly to the meme: "Some of our hypotheses were related to, you know, did [men] just think Ryan is a really cool dude, or somebody to admire or look up to... We don't know for certain, but that was just one of our main guesses," says Williamson.
"When they look at the meme, they aren’t just looking at the picture,” explains Sangster, “They are processing the message and integrating it into their belief system.”
However, even though their empathy with the message was found to increase, the men were not any more or less likely to actually describe themselves as a 'feminist'.
So is that a problem with the label, or can the effects all be put down to the persuasiveness of those eyes?
Well, that kind of defeats the object of the study. Sangster explains that the goal was to test the whole Gosling-plus-message effect, rather than each as a separate persuasive factor. Indeed, people are more likely to understand a particular ideology the more they read about it. This finding takes the image plus one-liner into account as a single entity.
So this is probably more about internet culture than feminism. It means that a meme dreamt up by an unsuspecting Tumblr user for the lols and the reposts can not only become an iconic internet in-joke but also go on to effect people's ideology and world perspective. Think about that next time you're using memegenerator to put some embarrassing text on a photo of your mate.
Own The Conversation
Ask The Big Question: Is the influence of memes a bad thing, given how uninformed so many vocal online commenters are?Disrupt Your Feed: If you need a meme to make sense of equality maybe you have bigger problems to deal with.
Drop This Fact: Ryan Gosling was cast in The Notebook because the director thought he wasn't good looking.