So I was originally going to blog today about how negative
ads mobilize the electorate and encourage voter participation. But after having read some of your comments
it seems like the biggest point of contention is with the difference between
positive and negative advertising. For
those who have not commented, or have not read the comments, many bloggers
wanted to know if positive ads had an effect similar to that of negative
ads. In other words, do positive ads
encourage voter participation like negative ads do? If so, are they more or less effective in
achieving voter mobilization than negative ads?
Of course, this was one of the first areas I wanted to
explore once I solved the question of negative advertising. It would seem that if positive ads were just
as effective as negative ones then campaigns would focus more on using
them. Below is an excerpt from my
literature review that deals with the question of positive/negative
advertising:
While not the main
focus of his study, Martin also found that negative ads were more effective in
achieving mobilization than positive ones.
Using psychological research to substantiate his finding, Martin argued
that negative information is privileged in memory, attention and judgment, thus
making negative ads more persuasive than positive ones, (Martin, 2004 cited in
Summers, 2012). Martin’s findings
regarding the effectiveness of negative ads were confirmed by a later study
done by Phillips et. al. in 2008. In
agreement with Martin, that study found that, “Negative ads had a significant
advantage over positive ads in reinforcing and increasing the commitment of
voters who support the candidate sponsoring the ad,” (Phillips, Urbany and
Reynolds, 2008). The Phillips study does
concede that negative ads may seem less effective considering they reinforce
and increase the commitment of voters who already support the candidate,
however they also found that instances where a negative ad changed the mind of
an opposing voter were not uncommon (Phillips, Urbany and Reynolds, 2008).
Based on the
research (and I will dive deeper into the psychology of the negative later), it
would appear that negative ads are more effective and more memorable than
positive ones. From a practical perspective,
this makes sense. To illustrate the
point, a pitcher in baseball probably can’t remember all of the strikes they
threw in a season, but they can recall with explicit detail the home run they
gave up to lose one game.
For my next post, I
will talk about why negative ads encourage participation and mobilize the
electorate. I hope, at least for now,
that I have satisfied some of the concerns regarding the difference between
positive and negative advertising.
References
Summers, Matthew. 2012. “Campaign Strategy and Election Outcomes.”
Summers, Matthew. 2012. "Literature Review."
References
Martin,
Paul S. 2004. “Inside the Black Box of Negative Campaign
Effects: Three Reasons Why Negative Campaigns Mobilize,” Political Psychology vol. 25, no. 4: 545-562.
Phillips,
Joan M., Joel E. Urbany and Thomas J. Reynolds. 2008. “Confirmation and the Effects of Valenced
Political Advertising: A Field Experiement,” Journal of Consumer Research vol. 34, no. 6: 794-806.
Summers, Matthew. 2012. “Campaign Strategy and Election Outcomes.”
Summers, Matthew. 2012. "Literature Review."