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Women tend to find sexually explicit ads unappealing if the products prices are placed higher, a new study proves.

In these recent years, the advertising firms have brought more sexual imagery in TV and print media,hoping it would entice the consumers to try that product. But a new research has proved that women take those ads seriously only when the product is priced rightly.

“Women generally show spontaneous negative attitudes toward sexual images,” wrote psychological scientist Kathleen Vohs, a researcher at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, and colleagues. “Sexual economics theory offers a reason why: The use of sexual imagery is inimical to women’s vested interest in sex being portrayed as infrequent, special, and rare.”

Vohs along with colleagues, found that women’s negative attitude toward sexual imagery might be compromised if the sex depicted in the ads is shown of sex being highly valued and of great worth. If a sexual imagery is associated with a product that is high priced but delivers exclusivity can result in less off-putting too.

Men and women were called in the lab to view advertisements for women’s watches. Few ads presented watches in a rather sexual imagery whereas some of the them were pictures with a majestic mountain range. The watches advertised were priced at $10 and $1,250.

In the study it was evident that women who saw the sexual imagery with the cheap watch rated the ad more negatively. The negative ratings given was mainly driven by the participant’s negative emotions like feeling upset, unpleasantly surprised, disgusted or being angry.

“We were able to get these effects even when participants weren’t actually in a purchasing scenario. Just a quick exposure to an ad was enough for theories of sexual economics to kick in,” Vohs explained. “This suggests that the process happens at a deep, intuitive level.”

The developments of the study is published in a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.