Comments Considered

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

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."