Negative Political Advertising and Voting Intent: The Role of Involvement and Alternative Information Sources

Negative Political Advertising and Voting Intent: The Role of Involvement and AlternativeInformation SourcesAuthor(s): Ronald J. Faber, Albert R. Tims and Kay G. SchmittSource: Journal of Advertising, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Dec., 1993), pp. 67-76Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4188900 .

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Negative Political Advertising and Voting Intent: The Role of Involvement and Alternative Information Sources Ronald J. Faber, Albert R. Tims and Kay G. Schmitt

Previous research on negative political advertising has found both intended and backlash effects, indicating that the impact of these ads is likely to be contingent on other factors. The current study examines some potentially important contingent variables - level of involvement and attention to both newspapers and television for political information. Regression analyses indicate that both enduring and situational involvement and attention to television news increase the impact of negative political ads on voting decisions. Al- though it initially appears that attention to newspaper is unrelated to the impact of negative ads, analysis of covariance shows that newspaper reading actually reduces the impact of negative ads after controlling for other variables.

Ronald J. Faber, (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin) is Associate Professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota.

Albert R. Tims, (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin) is Associate Professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota.

Kay G. Schmitt, is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota.

Journal of Advertising, Volume XXII, Number 4 December 1993

Currently, one of the most discussed aspects of political advertising is the impact of negative appeals. Questions and concerns about the ethics and influence of negative political ads are common in both the popular press (Grove 1989; Martz 1988; Taylor 1989) and the academic literature (Caywood and Laczniak 1985; Garramone et al. 1990; Hill 1989; Merritt 1984). This debate has been spurred by the high degree to which candidates are employ- ing this form of advertising.

In 1981, Sabato estimated that negative ads made up one third of all spot political ads. More recent estimates of the percentage of campaign advertising expenditures devoted to negative advertising range from 30% to more than half of the average candidate's advertising budget (Colford 1986; John- son-Cartee and Copeland 1991). Appropriating such a large percentage of the ad budget to negative advertising suggests that candidates and their campaign committees believe it is an effective technique.

Academic research, however, has indicated that the effects of negative political ads may not be so clear-cut. Several studies indicate that negative ads can create negative opinions of the target candidate (Boydston and Kaid 1983; Garramone 1985; Merritt 1984). Other studies, however, have found backlash effects against the sponsoring candidate to be as great or greater than the intended effects (Hill 1989; Faber, Tims and Schmitt 1990). Addi- tionally, these studies have found that while some people show large changes in candidate preference after exposure to negative ads, many others indicate no effect from exposure. One possible reason for these conflicting results is that several contingent factors influence the impact of political ads. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to suggest a number of possible factors, characteristics of either the message or of voters, that may affect the outcome of negative ad exposure, and to examine the role two potentially important voter-related variables - alternative sources of political information and political involvement - play in influencing the magnitude of impact negative political advertising has on voters. Both involvement and alternative information sources have previously been found to influence voters' motivation and ability to process and evaluate political information (Atkin 1980; Berkowitz and Pritchard 1989; Choi and Becker 1987; McClure

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68 Journal of Advertising

and Patterson 1974; Rothschild 1978); they are, therefore, also likely to affect the magnitude of impact negative messages have on voters.

Theoretical Background

Prior survey research has indicated consistently that voters do indeed recall negative ads. A survey across six southern states found two thirds of the respondents remembered seeing a negative ad during the 1986 elections (Johnson and Copeland 1987). More than 75% of the respondents in a Michigan congressional election survey stated they recalled see-

ing a negative ad, and 57.7% were able to recall the name of either the sponsor or target of the ad (Garramone 1984a). More specifically, between 47% and 68% of respondents were able to recall specific negative ads from a Minnesota senatorial election (Faber, Tims and Schmitt 1990), and almost 200/0 of all information recalled from ads in a Texas guberna- torial election were negative comments about an opponent (Faber and Storey 1984).

One reason why negative information may be particularly likely to be remembered from ads has been proposed by Lau (1982). Using Gestalt principles, he suggested that negative information may be counter to what people are accustomed to and expect from advertising messages and, as a result, stands out disproportionately. Whether due to novelty or some other reason, researchers have typically found that

negative information is better recalled than positive information (Garramone et al. 1990; Reeves, Thorson and Schleuder 1986; Shapiro and Rieger 1989). Even more importantly, it has been demonstrated that negative information is weighted more heavily than positive information in developing impressions and form- ing evaluations (Kellerman 1984; Wyer 1970). Thus, information from negative political ads may play a

key role in candidate preference decision. Studies examining the relative effect of negative and positive information in political decisions have supported this belief (Klein 1991; Lau 1982, 1985).

Other studies have found that voters express negative opinions about the use of negative political ads

(Garramone 1984a; Johnson and Copeland 1987; Stewart 1975), and that a backlash effect may result if voters disapprove of a candidate using negative appeals. Thus, while negative information may be

disproportionately influential in voters' decisions, it can influence voting preference in either direction. In both cases, negative ads may be more retrievable from memory than positive appeals and play a greater

role in voting preferences, but the outcome of the voting decision would depend on how voters evalu- ated the negative ads.

Given the importance of negative advertising and the potential for bi-directional effects, research is needed on two related issues. The first is to determine what influences the direction of response to negative ads (intend or backlash effects), and the second issue is to determine what factors influence the degree to which negative ads will influence voters at all (the magnitude of impact negative ads have on voting preferences). A number of potentially important variables that may affect either or both of these issues have been suggested. These variables can generally be divided into two groups - attributes of the ads and attributes of the voters.

Ad Attributes

Existing research supports the belief that attributes of the ads themselves influence their effectiveness. Boydston and Kaid (1983), for example, compared pre- and post-exposure scores for five negative ads on a 13-item scale assessing the image of the target of the ad. In general, their results indicated that exposure to negative ads had a negative effect on the image of the target, but not all ads were equally suc- cessful in changing impressions of the target candidate. Of the five negative ads they examined, three produced significant changes while two did not. Addi- tionally, when individual image items were examined, some actually improved as a result of exposure to some of these negative ads. Similarly, Faber, Tims and Schmitt (1990) found variations in intended and backlash effects across the four negative ads studied. Since these studies involved the same voters and the same political race, it would seem that differences across ads must be attributable to advertising differences.

Several authors have recently suggested that there may be different types of negative ads and that a

typology of negative ads may help explain differences in reported effects (Johnson-Cartee and Copeland 1991; Thorson, Christ and Caywood 1991). For example, Johnson-Cartee and Copeland (1991) suggest that there may be three types of negative political ads - direct attack, direct comparison and implied com-

parisons. Direct attack ads are the ones that most people consider when they think of negative ads and the type most common in research studies. They are also the form most likely to cause backlash effects. On the other hand, implied comparisons, where the




December 1993 69

opposing candidate is not specifically mentioned, may be the most effective in creating intended effects because they lead viewers to generate their own argu- ments.

Additional studies have pointed out other potential within-ad factors that can affect how people evaluate a negative ad. Garrantone (1985) compared the effect of a negative ad that was sponsored by the opposing candidate versus one sponsored by a political action committee. Results indicated that subjects had a more negative image of the target candidate and were less likely to vote for this candidate if the ad was sponsored by an independent source than if the sponsor was the opposing candidate. Additionally, the image of the opponent and likelihood of voting for this candidate were higher if the negative ad was sponsored by an independent source. Thus, it would appear that intended effects may be more common if the ad is sponsored by someone other than the opposing candidate.

Another content factor that might influence the impact of a negative ad is the focus of the attack. Johnson and Copeland (1987) found that respondents considered attacks against an opponent's stand on the issues to be more acceptable than negative ads focusing on "personal" aspects of the target candidate. In an experimental study, Roddy and Garramone (1988) found that viewers of a negative ad based on issues had significantly more positive evaluations of the sponsor's character and were significantly less likely to vote for the target candidate than were viewers of a negative image ad. Thus, it appears that negative issue ads may produce more intended effects while negative image ads may produce a greater backlash effect.

Other factors such as believability or credibility of the message or the salience of the issue or personality attribute attacked may also influence voters' evaluations of negative ads. Additionally, other ad-related factors may influence the impact of a negative ad by affecting its accessibility from memory. Two factors that seem particularly likely to accomplish this are emotion and visual imagery.

Evidence indicates that emotional political ads are better recalled than non-emotional appeals (Lang, 1991; Shapiro and Rieger 1989) and that negative emotional political ads are better recalled than positive emotional political ads (Lang and Lanfear 1990). It has also been suggested that ads that contain strong visual images may be more accessible from memory (Kisielius and Sternthal 1986). Finally, some research suggests that negative emotions in commercials im-

prove memory for the visual elements in the ad (Lang and Friestad 1987). Taken together, these findings might help to explain why the "Willie Horton" and "Boston Harbor" ads may have played such a strong role in of the 1988 presidential election.

The impact of these ad attributes discussed above can best be assessed in experimental settings. They require control of all extraneous variables with the manipulation of some content element. This can not be observed in an actual race where many additional factors vary. While appropriate for studying these content attributes, experiments typically have a diffi- cult time accounting for voter-related variables. These too need to be examined, but are typically better studied through survey research during actual elections.

Voter Attributes

While work is currently being done on the impact of several of the ad attributes on political decision making, much less attention has been focused on voter attributes. The one voter attribute that has been examined is partisanship. Although partisanship does not effect voters' recall of negative ads for one candidate or the other, it does strongly influence how these ads will affect voters' candidate preferences (Faber, Tims and Schmitt 1990; Merritt 1984). Negative ads have much greater intended effects on partisans of the source candidate than on partisans of the target candidate. Conversely, backlash effects are more likely among partisans of the target candidate. Indepen- dent voters are somewhat more likely to report backlash effects than intended effects (Faber, Tims and Schmitt 1990).

While partisanship has been found to influence the direction of the impact of negative ads, little previous work has examined what voter variables may influence the magnitude of these effects. The broader literature in political communications suggests that two variables, involvement and alternative information sources, may be important.

Although strong disagreements exist over just what involvement is (Roser 1990; Zaichkowsky 1986), it has generally been regarded as an important media- tor of the effects of political advertising (Atkin 1980; Rothschild 1978). Some authors have conceptualized involvement as a stimulus characteristic with the level of the election race (low level versus high level races) serving as an indicator of involvement (Rothschild 1978; Rothschild and Ray 1974). These studies found greater knowledge gains from exposure to political ads in low involving elections. Other re-

December 1993 69



70 Journal of Adverti8iragW

searchers have conceptualized involvement as a characteristic of the voter and in these studies conflicting findings have emerged. Some find less involved voters learn more from political ads (Hofstetter and Buss 1980; Hofstetter, Zukin and Buss 1978; Patterson and McClure 1974). However, others report that advertising recall is positively associated with interest level (Faber and Storey 1984) and information seeking (Atkin et al. 1973; Garramone 1983, 1984b), both of which are characteristics of high involvement situ- ations (Rothschild 1978).

The confusion in findings regarding involvement is often attributed to the variations in how involvement has been conceptualized and operationalized (Roser 1990; Zaichkowsky 1986). Some authors have suggested that there are three different types of involvement: physical, enduring and situational (Houston and Rothschild 1978; Zaichkowsky 1985). Physical involvement refers to characteristics of the object being examined (Zaichkowsky 1985). In the realm of political advertising this would refer to the level of the election. Enduring (or personal) involvement refers to a long-term, inherent interest in a product category or topic, while situational involvement reflects the temporary relevance of a specific object or concern with a short-term outcome (Roser 1990; Rothschild, 1978; Zaichkowsky 1985). When discuss- ing political elections, enduring involvement might refer to a voter's general interest in politics while situational involvement would reflect concern about the outcome of a specific election.

Each type of involvement can also be considered to influence at least two different mechanism that re- late to an ad's impact on attitude change (Petty, Unnava and Strathman 1991). These mechanisms are one's motivation to process information and one's ability to process the ad content. People who are high in both situational and enduring involvement should be motivated and able to process negative political ads. Those with high enduring involvement should have greater ability to process and evaluate these messages since they have probably developed more prior political knowledge. However, this previously developed knowledge may mitigate the impact of any additional piece of new information. Situational involvement, on the other hand, may exert less impact on ability to process political messages and more on motivation. As a result, new information may exert its greatest impact when situational involvement is high and enduring involvement is moderate or low. Therefore, we can hypothesize that both enduring and situational involvement will be positively associ-

ated with the impact of negative ads on voters, but that this association will be stronger for situational involvement than for enduring involvement.

Another variable that might influence the impact of negative political ads is exposure to other information sources about the candidates. Unfortunately, most political studies have chosen to examine one source of information in isolation from other potential sources. Several authors have recently criticized this practice and have argued for the need to examine the interde- pendent relationship among information sources (Berkowitz and Pritchard 1989; Choi and Becker 1987). Similar calls for the examination of the political advertising effects within a larger framework of media use have occasionally been made (Atkin and Heald 1976) but rarely heeded.

To date, most research on the outcomes of media usage has focused only on cognitive effects (Berkowitz and Pritchard 1989; Choi and Becker 1987). These studies have found that newspaper reading is positively associated with candidate knowledge (Becker and Dunwoody 1982) and with the ability to discrimi- nate between candidates' stands on issues (Choi and Becker 1987), while television news viewing is unrelated to these variables.

Therefore, attention to newspapers may accord a more sophisticated framework of knowledge and rea- soning, thereby lessening the likelihood of influence from campaign appeals such as negative political advertisements. In contrast, television viewing is associated with lower amounts of information holding and is not associated with discriminating among candidates. Accordingly, we can hypothesize that: 1) attention to newspapers will be negatively associated with negative ad impact, while 2) attention to television news will be positively associated with negative political ad impact.

Among the voter variables, partisanship has previously been shown to mediate the direction of the impact negative ads have on a voter's decision making (Faber, Tims and Schmitt 1990; Merritt 1984). It has been suggested here that involvement and use of other media sources will mediate the magnitude of this impact, although this has not previously been tested. Therefore, the current study was designed to examine the impact of situational and enduring involvement and news media usage on the magnitude of influence negative ads have on voter preferences.

Methodology

The context for this investigation was the 1988 U.S.




December 1993 71

Figure 1 Description of Negative Ads

Durenberger - Ad 1 This ad stressed that Humphrey had been soft on crime. Specifically, it was charged that the crime rate increased during the time Humphrey was attorney general.

Durenberger - Ad 2 This ad attacked Humphrey for making the tone of the campaign more negative. It played on the respect people had for Humphrey's famous father (Hubert Humphrey) and stated that his father would be disappointed in the approach he took in this campaign.

Humphrey- Ad 1 This ad attacked Durenberger's stand on Medicare. It claimed that Durenberger had cast the deciding vote in the Senate that had defeated the medicare bill.

Humphrey- Ad 2 This ad questioned Durenberger's ethics by attacking him for having taken a vacation trip to Puerto Rico that had been financed by corporations that wanted a tax break. It pointed out that Durenberger later supported this tax break in the Senate.

Senate race in Minnesota. This race matched a Re- publican incumbent, Dave Durenberger, and a relatively well-known Democratic challenger, Hubert (Skip) Humphrey III, the state attorney general. Both candidates ran television advertisements that em- ployed extensive negative advertising. Four of the most prominent negative ads were selected for examination in this study. Each of these ads made a direct attack on the opponent. Two of the ads were sponsored by the incumbent, and two were sponsored by the challenger (see Figure 1 for descriptions). Each ad ran during the middle stage of the campaign (three to six weeks before the election). The ads were chosen because of their perceived equivalence between candidates in terms of frequency of occurrence, timing and content.

Sample

A sample of eligible voters was interviewed by tele- phone during the ten-day period preceding the election. Subjects were drawn systematically, using a ran- dom start, from the voter registration list of the state's most populous county. Interviewers were instructed to try at least three times to reach each voter. A total of 286 interviews were completed from among the 448 eligible voters sampled, yielding a response rate of 64 percent.

The sample was comprised of 51.6 percent males

and 48.4 percent females; 51.3 percent of the sample were younger than 40. The respondents were well educated, with 41.0 percent holding at least an un- dergraduate degree. Finally, 29.0 percent of the subjects regarded themselves Republican, 36.0% were Democrat and 30.1% said they supported neither major party (4.9% refused to answer). These findings closely match the profile of the population of regis- tered voters.

Dependent Measure

Respondents were asked if they had seen each of the four specific negative ads. A brief indication of the central content of each ad was provided as a prompt. For each ad, those respondents who said they recalled seeing it were asked to indicate, on a five-point scale, whether the ad made them more or less likely to vote for the candidate sponsoring the ad and whether they were more or less likely to vote for the candidate being attacked.

In a previous study it was shown that the direction of changes in candidate preference as a result of exposure to these ads was highly related to partisanship (Faber, Tims and Schmitt 1990). While some variations exist across these ads in the amount of people reporting preference changes, the pattern of these changes was highly consistent. Since the purpose of the current study was to determine if involvement

December 1993 71



72_ Jouna of Adveri8i

and use of other media influenced the magnitude of preference change resulting from exposure to negative ads, a non-directional measure was needed here. This was accomplished by folding the original scales to form three-point non-directional measures of the magnitude of change toward each candidate (no change, some change or much change). This "folding" procedure is a common and recommended method for developing measures of the magnitude of an effect (Torgerson 1958). These non-directional scales were then summed to develop an overall index of the magnitude of preference change that could directly be attributed to exposure to the negative ads examined here (negative ad impact index). Cronbach's alpha for this eight-item index was .82, indicating that the folded scores form a reliable index.

Naturally, not all respondents recalled all four of the negative ads. When a respondent failed to recall a particular negative ad they were coded as if this ad had no influence on their candidate preference. This was considered to be a logical approach since recog- nizing a particular ad would seem to be a precondi- tion for this ad's having exerted an impact on candidate preference. However, to insure the adequacy of this assumption, separate analyses were also con- ducted treating no recall of an ad as missing data. These alternative analysis strategies produce identi- cal results. Therefore, only the analyses treating no recall of an ad as having no impact on voting preference are reported here.

Independent Variables

As indicated earlier, involvement can be sub-divided into enduring involvement and situational involvement. Measures of each of these constructs were included here. Enduring political involvement reflects a long term, on-going interest in politics (Rothschild 1978). If someone has an enduring involvement it was believed that this would be reflected by their actively seeking political information and by their desire to discuss politics in general. Therefore, enduring involvement was operationalized by using an additive index based on the following two items: (1) "Is news about politics something you try to pay attention to, or is it something you just happen to learn about because it is in the media?"; (2) "Is politics something you like to talk about or do you only discuss it if someone else brings it up?" These items were significantly correlated (r = .37; p < .001).

Unlike enduring involvement, situational involvement is specific to the current political campaign

(Rothschild 1978). Therefore, the measure of situational involvement focused directly on respondents' interest and concern with the specific race. The following two items were used in an additive index to operationalize situational involvement: (1) "How closely have you followed the current U.S. Senate race in Minnesota?"; (2) "How concerned are you with who wins the race for the Senate?" Four-point scales were used to measure responses to both questions. The correlation between the two indicators of situational involvement was .44 (p < .001).

Single item measures were used to assess attention to news about politics (1) on television and (2) in the newspaper. Both items were based on four-point scales ranging from very closely to not closely at all.

Results

It was hypothesized that both enduring and situational involvement would be positively associated with the perceived impact of negative ads on voting preference and that this association would be stronger for situational involvement than for enduring involvement. Additionally, it was believed that attention to newspapers would be negatively associated with negative ad impact index, while attention to television news would be positively related. An initial examination of the data via zero-order correlations showed that enduring involvement, situational involvement, attention to television news about politics and attention to newspaper news about politics were all positively related with each other (see Table 1). Of greater importance, however, is the association of each of these variables with the negative ad impact index. As expected, enduring involvement, situational involvement and attention to television news about politics were all positively related (p < .01) with the negative ad impact index. Additionally, the magnitude of the correlation for situational involvement was greater than that for enduring involvement. How- ever, attention to news about politics in the newspaper and the negative political ad impact index were not significantly correlated as had been hypothesized.

Since the independent variables were correlated and this could mask or distort the impact of any particular variable, a multiple regression analysis was run to assess the unique contribution of each of the independent variables. Additionally, by using a hierarchical model, it was possible to control for the potential effects of demographic variables (age, edu- cation and gender) and political partisanship by en-

tering them in an initial block. None of these control




December 1993 73

Table 1 Correlations, Means and Standard Deviations for All Measures

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

(1) Impact of negative ads

(2) Enduring involvement .25

(3) Situational involvement .33 .35

(4) TV news attention .33 .25 .19

(5) Newspaper news attention .05 .46 .39 .34

Mean 6.4 2.8 3.8 1.7 2.0 Standard Deviation 4.9 .78 1.4 .71 .86

Note: All correlations > .16 are significant at the p < .01 level.

variables was significantly related to the dependent variable and this block of variables did not make a significant contribution to the multiple regression equation. Further analysis showed that these control variables were also unrelated to any of the independent variables. Therefore, the analysis was rerun with- out the initial block of control variables in order to simplify the model.

Table 2 reveals that political engagement, campaign interest and attention to television news about politics make statistically significant, unique contribu- tions to the prediction of the negative political ad impact index. Higher levels of enduring involvement, situational involvement and television news attention are clearly associated with a greater influence of negative political ads on candidate vote preference. Attention to politics in the newspaper, in contrast, is now significantly associated with lower levels of impact for negative political ads. This change from the results of the zero-order correlations shows that once we control for enduring and situational involvement and attention to television news, attention to politics in newspapers does lessen the influence of negative political ads on candidate vote preference.

To provide a clearer and more visual representa- tion of the relationship between newspaper attention and the impact of negative political ads on voting intent, an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was per- formed using enduring involvement, situational involvement and attention to television news as covariates. Mean values, adjusted for the covariates,

were estimated for the negative ad impact index at each level of newspaper attention. As would be expected, the results of the ANCOVA reproduced the pattern of findings from the multiple regression analysis.

Table 3 shows the observed means for the negative ad impact index and the estimated mean values after introducing the covariate controls. The pattern is clear: negative political ads are substantially more influential when newspaper attention is low. These findings suggest that the lack of a significant zero-order relationship between the ad impact index and newspaper attention was a result of enduring involvement, situational involvement and television news attention acting as suppressor variables. Attention to news about politics in the newspaper, all other things being equal, seemingly diminishes the influence of negative campaign advertising. Because all things are not equal-those people having higher levels of enduring and situational involvement tend to pay more attention to political issues in newspapers-the true na- ture of the relationship between newspaper attention and negative ad influence is masked.

Discussion

This study has attempted to illuminate the rela- tionships between voter-related variables (involvement and news media use) and the magnitude of impact of negative political ads. The findings demonstrated support for the hypotheses that political in-

December 1993 73



74 Journal~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - of Advertising--c2

Table 2 Regression Analysis for Involvement and News Media Attention to Politics on the Impact of Negative

Political Advertisements

Regression Standard Weight Error Beta p<

Enduring involvement 1.19 .497 .19 .05 Situational involvement 1.11 .270 .31 .001 Television news attention 2.18 .504 .31 .001 Newspaper attention 1.53 .467 -.27 .001

Multiple R - .49, R2 - .24, p < .001.

Table 3 Observed and Adjusted Means for Negative Ad Impact on Vote Decision

by Levels of Newspaper Attention to Politics

Observed Adjusted' Mean Mean (N)

Very closely 6.80 4.27 90

Somewhat closely 6.70 5.34 126

Not too closely 5.68 6.42 49

Not closely at all 6.22 9.36 18

1 The adjusted means are estimated mean values of the dependent variable after removing the influence of the covariates (enduring involvement, situational involvement and television news attention).

volvement (both enduring and situational) positively influences the degree of impact negative political ads exert. This is in opposition to much of the previous literature examining involvement and learning from political advertising which indicated that political ads were most influential on passive voters who are unengaged in politics and disinterested in a campaign (Hofstetter and Buss 1980; Patterson and McClure 1974). Instead, we found that when voting preference is the dependent variable, people who are more involved and interested are most influenced by negative ads.

Two possible explanations may be suggested to ac- count for these findings. First, people who are en- gaged in politics and caught up in a race may attend more to campaign-related communication, regardless

of its form or medium. People with low involvement may pay little attention to any type of political communication including negative ads and thus be unaf- fected by them. Another possible explanation is that more involved voters may identify more strongly with candidates, thereby increasing the influence of negative ads. For supporters of the target candidate, this should lead to a strong backlash effect, while supporters of the source candidate will experience a strong intended effect. Although this study did not examine direction of effects, prior research has found that this type of polarization of the electorate is a likely outcome of exposure to negative ads (Faber, Tims and Schmitt 1990). Further research examining if and when backlash effects from negative ads are more powerful than intended effects is needed.

74 Journal of Advertisirn



December 1993 75

The findings also show that television news exposure, after controlling for enduring involvement and interest, was positively related to the amount of impact negative ads had on voting preferences. Televi- sion news viewing thus appears to accentuate the impact of negative political advertising. Since broad- cast news has begun to include discussions of negative ads, television news viewing may heighten the awareness and salience of these messages. Following television news may also allow voters to develop some knowledge of the candidates. As a result, these knowledge structures might enhance the processing and elaboration of negative political messages in ads. Elaboration is a particularly likely outcome if the negative messages are incongruent with information from other sources (Srull 1981). This could result in information that is more accessible and more likely to influence choice decisions (Kisielius and Sternthal 1986).

A negative relationship between newspaper reading and the impact of negative political advertisements was found, but only after imposing statistical controls for political involvement and television news attention. Despite acquiring a basis for more sophisticated and independent candidate evaluations from newspaper exposures, the politically involved appear to be significantly influenced by negative political advertising. Only after controlling for involvement and television news viewing does newspaper reading lessen the impact of negative political ads on the individual.

Several potential limitations must be considered in interpreting the findings from this study. First, all of the negative political ads examined here were television ads. While television ads constitute a major por- tion of the advertising mix for candidates running for the U.S. Senate, they nonetheless do not represent a full mix of campaign advertising. Examining only television ads may have particularly influenced the findings regarding the impact of exposure to television and newspaper news.

A second important limitation of this study is that it relied on relatively simple operationalizations of the independent variables. More fully developed operationalizations of these concepts, with demonstrated reliability and validity, are needed. Future studies incorporating such measures are needed to confirm the findings reported here and to more fully examine how and why involvement and attention to newspapers and television serve to mediate the impact of negative campaign advertising.

Finally, this study examined the magnitude of im-

pact of negative political advertising regardless of the direction of these effects. Future research should determine if these variables work differently for intended versus backlash effects and what additional factors influence the direction of effects.

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Documents

Negative Political Advertising and Voting Intent: The Role of Involvement and Alternative Information Sources