Appeals and strategies of negative political advertising

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to determine the relative effectiveness of different types of negative political advertising appeals and of various strategies for responding to the appeals. Results supported the prediction that, when attack commercials are followed by a response from the target, issue‐attack commercials are more effective than image‐attack commercials. Findings for response strategies were mixed. Although viewers evaluated a negative‐response commercial less favorably than a positive‐response commercial, the negative response was more effective in discouraging voting for the attacking candidate.