UD prof finds viewers are repulsed by negative campaign ads
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3:48 p.m., Oct. 14, 2008----Scientific evidence shows that negative campaign ads that cost millions of dollars have a physiological and psychological effect on voters, says James Angelini, professor of communications at the University of Delaware.

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The findings are based on research conducted by Angelini, in collaboration with Samuel Bradley, assistant professor of advertising at Texas Tech University, and Sungkyoung Lee of Indiana University, which used ads that aired during the 2000 presidential election. The results were published in the December 2007 Journal of Advertising.

The research found that negative political advertising makes the body want to turn away physically, but the mind remembers negative messages, though sometimes incorrectly, Angelini says.

According to data released last week by the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “during the week of Sept. 28-Oct. 4, nearly 100 percent of the [John] McCain campaign's advertisements were negative. During the same period, 34 percent of the [Barack] Obama campaign's ads were negative.”

During the study, Angelini and his research collaborators placed electrodes under the eyes of willing participants and showed them a series of 30-second ads from both the George W. Bush and Al Gore campaigns. The electrodes picked up on the “startle response,” the automatic eye movement typically seen in response to snakes, spiders and other threats. Compared to positive or neutral messages, negative advertising prompted greater reflex reactions and a desire to move away.

“When encountering something negative, including things that may endanger our survival, we have greater startles,” Angelini said. “Though nonlife-threatening, startle effects tend to be greater when we are faced with media content that we see as being negative in tone.”

Angelini said that while the goal of the ad is to discredit a candidate's opponent, the creators most likely do not know or understand the cognitive repercussions of someone being exposed to negative political advertisements.

“Although there isn't any one thing that is an alarm signal, the human brain will register things visual faster than things audio,” Angelini said. “If the visual images are negative and the audio is not as negative, the visual will typically overpower the content of the audio message.”

Because research indicates that some negative advertising can work, Angelini says that attack ads are not going do disappear from the American political scene anytime soon.

“What I think the producers of these messages have to realize is that they cannot take it to the extreme that some political advertisements have gone over the past eight to 12 years,” Angelini said. “The more negative the advertisement is seen to be, the more likely the viewers are going to avoid it all together, at which point the advertisement's overall message is lost.”

Article by Andrea Boyle and Jerry Rhodes
Photo by Kathy F. Atkinson

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