What I've Learned about Negative Advertising

       Well, for starters I always got a kick out of negative advertising on TV.  I guess you could say I found joy in watching one hopeful candidate verbally beat down his opposition.  I would sit there and watch in disbelief.  How could people be willing to attack someone like this on national television and then in some cases, get away with it and benefit themselves.  I don’t think walking into my English 201 class and laying down some vocal carnage saying everyone in the class is worthless and I should get an A would be very effective.  Yet politicians do it all the time, focusing on their opponent’s negatives and not their own qualifications for office.  Part of my research led me to look up and try to view some negative advertising from the past.  Let me tell you there are some real winners out there shelling out auditory poundings.  None of this what I’ve learned, but really why I chose the topic. 

       I knew from previous courses in psychology that memory is quite a complex process.  I didn’t expect to find that negative advertising would actually show stimulatory benefits for viewers.  Recall and recognition of the candidates involved was slightly larger than for positive ads.   There are a ton of different psychological views and approaches to how memories are exactly incorporated and recalled and how emotional states can help or hinder a person’s ability to remember.  The brain is such a complex machine it is hard to know anything definitively.  Along those lines I didn’t expect some aspects of the research I was doing to have a definitive answer.  We are under the general assumption that advertising works and draws in voters or consumers.  But what I didn’t stop to think about was how can we be sure it was just the advertising that caused the effect.  Can we correlate a voter’s intentions with an ad?  How do you connect the two?  The research in this field is primarily based on self-reported results, which is of course prone to countless errors, bias, etc.  Either way, negative advertising is something we all should think about at least a little.  Is it right to slander another person to better yourself?  Are moral standards even relevant when people are protected by the first amendment?  Let’s face it, we all know our politicians are crooks, or hold special interest and politics is at the center of our comedic industry.  Negative ads have been around for some time now, but recently have risen in number.  I would have to believe people’s dislike for politics could have a root in the negativity associated ads and the system as a whole.  Have politicians begun digging the grave for what little respect this democracy still has left?