Wardrobe Malfunctions and the Measurement of Internet Behaviour

doi:10.4236/psych.2011.23042

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Psychology

2011. Vol.2, No.3, 266-268

Wardrobe Malfunctions and the Measurement of Internet

Behaviour*

Roland Pfister

Department of Psychology III, Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany.

Email: [email protected]

Received January 4th, 2011; revised February 24th, 2011; accepted April 10th, 2011.

The wardrobe malfunction—an unanticipated exposure of bodily parts in the public—has become a prevailing

issue in concerts, shows and other celebrity events that is reliably reported by the media. The internet as the

fastest source for celebrity gossip allows measuring the impact of such wardrobe malfunctions on the public in-

terest in a celebrity. This measurement in turn allows conclusions about intention, motivation, and internet be-

haviour of a wide variety of internet users. The present study exemplifies the use of an innovative non-reactive

measure of active interest—the Search Volume Index—to assess the impact of a variety of internet-related phe-

nomena, including wardrobe malfunctions. Results indicate that interest in a celebrity increases immediately af-

ter such an event and stays at a high level for about three weeks (the wardrobe plateau). This special form of ce-

lebrity gossip thus meets a constant interest of a substantial proportion of internet users.

Keywords: Internet Behaviour, Search Volume Index, Non-reactive Measurement, Wardrobe Malfunction

Introduction

January 31, 2004, gave rise to an intense public discussion as

the right breast cup of Janet Jackson’s costume was torn off

during the Super Bowl live event that was broadcasted on

American and international television. The event was instantly

reported in numerous television shows, print media, and the

internet where discourse centered primarily on the intentional-

ity of the incident (Holland, 2009). This discourse eventually

led to the creation of a term that was nearly awarded word of

the year 2004: the wardrobe malfunction (American Dialect

Society, 2005).

A wardrobe malfunction was defined as an “unanticipated

exposure of bodily parts” by the American Dialect Society

(2005) or, in more detail, as “an accidental or supposedly acci-

dental failure of clothing to cover parts of the body intended to

be covered” (Peckham, 2005). Such wardrobe malfunctions

occurred frequently ever since the 2004 Super Bowl show and

were reliably reported in the media, especially the internet

which has become the most important portal for celebrity news

(Choi & Berger, 2010). Thus, wardrobe malfunctions seem to

be one of several ways to increase internet presence which in

turn helps to maintain celebrity status (Gamson, 2002; Kurz-

man et al., 2007).

This speculation, however, only holds true if such news are

of interest to a broader mass of people. Several recent studies

assessed the characteristics of people who are interested in

celebrity gossip, and, among others, correlations were found

with addiction (Sheridan, North, Matlby, & Gillett, 2007) and

sensation seeking (McCutcheon, Ashe, Houran, & Maltby,

2003). Further studies exploring motivations of internet users in

general discovered a profound contribution of social as well as

sexual motives, including recent internet-related pathologies

such as cyberstalking or addiction to cybersex (Young, Pistner,

O’Mara, & Buchanan, 1999).

In the light of the findings on individual motives of internet

users, celebrity misbehaviours such as wardrobe malfunctions

could indeed provide a powerful tool to boost a celebrities’ web

presence. This hypothesis was tested empirically by using the

novel, non-reactive measure of Search Volume Indices, roughly

corresponding to the global internet traffic being produced by

Google searches for a given term.

Method

Seventeen wardrobe malfunctions from 2004 to 2009 were

identified and included in the analysis (see Appendix for a

complete list). This selection of cases concentrates on wardrobe

malfunctions that occurred during official events and were ob-

served by numerous people, such as TV shows, concerts, or

film festivals. However, this collection is necessarily subjective

as there are no comprehensive lists from serious sources avail-

able. The case of Janet Jackson described above was not used

for further data analysis to avoid an overestimation of a ward-

robe malfunction’s impact due to the archetypical nature of the

case and the extremely high media presence that followed it.

For a comparison to the data of the remaining cases, the impact

of Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction on the chosen de-

pendent variable of Search Volume Indices is shown in Figure 1.

For each of the 17 cases identified, Search Volume Indices

(SVIs) were assessed via Google Trends (Google Inc., 2009).

The SVI quantifies the impact of a given keyword on global

internet traffic as measured by the number of Google searches

for that keyword. Thus, the SVI represents a non-reactive

measure of active interest in a given topic. SVI scores are pro-

vided for each week since January 2004 and they are scaled

relative to the mean traffic produced by the keyword in this first

*This publication was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)

and the University of Würzburg in the funding programme Open Access

Publishing.

R. PFISTER 267

-50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

Search Volume Index

Wee k I ndex ( 2004)

February 2004:J anet Jac ks on' s

wardrobe malfunction during live

performance at the Super Bowl

show on January 31.

Figure 1.

Search Volume Indices (SVI) as a non-reactive, relative measure of

internet traffic produced by Google searches for “Janet Jackson” in the

course of 2004. SVIs can be interpreted as a week’s traffic in relation

to the average traffic during January 2004. The first week of February

2004—following Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction during the Super

Bowl show on January 31—thus yielded an increase of relative internet

traffic by a factor of about 370.

month (fixed scaling). Thus, a fictive SVI score for the term

“Psychology” of 1.5 in the last week of August 2004 indicates

that internet traffic produced by this term in this week is 1.5

times as much as during January 2004. Fixed SVIs were ex-

tracted for each of the four weeks prior to the event (being rela-

tively constant at SVI = 1), for the week of the event, and for

the following eight weeks.

Results

All scores were baseline-corrected by subtracting the mean

SVI of the four weeks prior to the wardrobe malfunction. SVIs

were averaged across all 17 cases and 99% confidence intervals

were computed for each week (see Figure 2). SVIs instantly

increased in the week of the event and stayed at a constant level

for the next week, too. In week three after the event, SVIs were

markedly decreased but still significantly above baseline,

marking the end of the wardrobe plateau. Finally, and being at a

relatively low level already, SVIs started to decrease asymp-

totically in the following weeks (see Figure 2; details of the

effects for each case of wardrobe malfunction are included in

the Appendix).

For further statistical analysis, individual profiles were ag-

gregated to four time markers: the time prior to the wardrobe

malfunction (baseline), the week of the wardrobe malfunction,

the week after the wardrobe malfunction, and the following 7

weeks. These four data points were analyzed by within-subjects

ANOVA with the single factor of time. The factor’s significant

influence, F(3, 48) = 3.73, p = .035, ηp2 = .19 (Greenhouse-

Geisser adjusted to account for non-sphericity), was mainly

based on a quadratic trend with timescale-corrected contrast

vector, F(1, 16) = 7.16, p = .016, ηp2 = .31, without linear or

cubic components (both F’s < 1).

Discussion

The impact of wardrobe malfunctions on a celebrity’s inter-

net presence was assessed by means of the internet traffic that

was produced by Google searches for the name of the celebrity

in question. Examining 17 cases of wardrobe malfunction, a

statistically reliable increase of searches was found as long as

the third week after the incident with a plateau activity during

-1

‐4‐3‐2‐1012345678

Search V ol ume Index

Wee k Index

Figure 2.

Baseline-corrected mean SVI scores of 17 cases of wardrobe malfunc-

tion in relation to the onset of the event in week 0. Error bars represent

99% confidence intervals.

the first two to three weeks. This plateau activity amounted to a

baseline-corrected SVI of about 3, indicating a substantially

increased internet presence during that time. Given the

fast-paced nature of the internet community, the reported im-

pact duration of about 3 weeks is even more remarkable and

indicates a profound interest in this type of news among a high

proportion of internet users. Even though no conclusions are

possible about the interrelations with other factors, the motive

of using the internet as a source for celebrity gossip in combi-

nation with soft pornographic material fits with other results on

internet-related motives such as social and affective motives or

interest in pornography (Young et al., 1999).

Considering the nature of SVIs as dependent variable, sev-

eral alternative explanations might also account for the in-

creased interest in a celebrity after a wardrobe malfunction. For

instance, the present experiment only analyzed events that were

broadcasted to numerous people. Thus, the increased interest

might indicate solely an interest in the event as such. This al-

ternative explanation was tested by further analyses that used a

similar situation but without wardrobe malfunction and applied

the same test as before (data not shown here). In these analyses,

no comparable increase could be detected for any event. The

increased internet presence of a celebrity after a wardrobe mal-

function is thus indeed specific to the event studied.

Taken together, the present study demonstrated the use of

Search Volume Indices as a non-reactive measure of internet

behaviour. The measure provides an attractive opportunity for

internet research as the data is readily available and provides a

unique opportunity for studying internet behaviour on a broader

scale. The method can easily be applied to a wide variety of

research questions and might provide a valuable tool for media

researchers.

References

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Appendix

Individual case statistics for all cases included in the present

analysis. Numbers in the three effect columns represent SVI scores for the week of the event (Week 0) and the following

two weeks (Week 1 and We e k 2).

Event Effect

Case Name

Month Year Week 0 Week 1 Week 2

1 Pamela Anderson March 2009 0.10 0.02 0.00

2 Toni Braxton June 2006 1.09 0.01 –0.34

3 Naomi Campbell January 2005 5.85 1.05 0.14

4 Katrina Campins March 2005 0.96 0.54 0.15

5 Mariah Carrey July 2005 2.72 0.4 –0.16

6 Julie Ferrier February 2009 1.47 3.09 –0.10

7 Jennifer Hawkins August 2004 4.65 3.57 0.20

8 Beyoncé Knowles August 2007 0.37 0.02 –0.10

9 Lindsay Lohan February 2006 2.45 0.95 0.36

10 Sophie Marceau May 2005 22.95 8.75 0.26

11 Kate Moss March 2009 0.36 0.09 0.15

12 Eva Padberg May 2009 0.2 0.25 0.05

13 Gwyneth Paltrow September 2009 –0.01 –0.14 –0.23

14 Natalie Portman June 2009 –0.12 –0.15 –0.09

15 Tara Reid October 2004 3.85 23.65 4.14

16 Britney Spears September 2007 2.05 0.41 0.21

17 Emma Watson July 2009 7.3 8.70 2.04