With election day on the other-side of the weekend, presidential campaign ads surge from the two parties seeking to sting each other with brazenly dishonest information; all the while making this the most expensive campaign ever. “The best rule of thumb is to assume they are all lies,” David Horsey of the LA Times said, reporting that Ohio alone is watching $181 million worth of attack ads. C’mon guys, can’t we play nice?Even though the age-old tradition of mud-slinging has always been good strategy, new research is explaining the psychology that makes smearing a more robust projectile than the bore of positive pontification. George Bizer, a psych professor at Union College, just published a brief report in which provided survey evidence shows how negative political statements are simply more revered than positively framed remarks.From a survey of 115 participants, Bizer said that, “Those participants who were led to frame their attitudes negatively showed more resistance to the counter-attitudinal information than did the participants who were led to frame their attitudes positively.” Or, in other words, respondents who were led to have negative opinions about a candidate were more resolute in those opinions, regardless of candidate. Ergo, negative ads are more effective. It follows that the whale-sized negative thought catalogs of the campaigns ought to read thusly, -“Vote for Obama”- “Don’t vote for Romney” -“Yes we can!”- “No they can’t!” -“Help Romney Restore America”- “Eject Obama” etc., etc.But a little foreplay seems necessary. One critical finding in the paper is how the negative framing of statements is particularly effective due to people processing the messages more deeply. As Bizer wrote, “When people are not motivated and able, the effect goes away. So, perhaps counter-intuitively, the people who care the most about the issues or candidates seem more likely to be affected by the bias.” So while negative attacks ads may be more effective, they only work if people are already invested in the issues.Follow Daniel Stuckey on Twitter.
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