Information Seeking and Processing in Positive and Negative Ads, Another Role of Negativty.

Through an experiment, this paper purports to evaluate how valence in political ads affects the seeking and processing of information in political campaigns. This paper builds on the debate between those who argue that negative ads provide valuable information and those who argue that it demobilizes the electorate. The main focus of this paper is in information processing. The demobilization hypothesis long ago proposed that negative ads disenchant the electorate and make them more skeptical about politics. On the other hand, Geer (2006) argued that negative ads are valuable for democracy because they provide information that must be backed up by the attacking party. This is in contrast to positively toned ads where the candidate will portray himself in the best light possible and attempt to make the viewer like him without necessarily taking positions that may alienate a group of voters. This study directly assesses the claim that negative ads provide voters with more information. Although I do not argue with Geer's great content analysis of political ads and the finding that the amount of information negative ads convey is much greater than that of positive ads; I do question the usefulness of this information for the electorate. I argue that negative ads may disenchant the public and make them less likely to pay attention to these ads, and that they will also recall less factual information than if the information were presented in a positive light. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]