Scientists track effects of negative ads

[Guest guest]

We need to be careful of what we allow to get into our consciousness!!!

 

Quote: " Those triggers reach into our brains faster than words, ideas

and rational thought "

 

http://news./s/ap/20061103/ap_on_sc/political_ads_science_2

 

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer /Fri Nov 3, 4:10 PM ET/

 

WASHINGTON - The grainy black-and-white images appear on television,

while ominous music plays in the background. It's another in a blizzard

of negative political ads and before you consciously know it, the

message takes hold of your brain. You may not want it to, but it works

just about instantly.

 

Iacoboni's brain imaging research from the 2004 presidential campaign

revealed that viewers lost empathy for their own candidate once he was

attacked.

 

Scientists around the country are logging the emotional and physical

effects of negative political ads. Iacoboni tracked parts of the middle

brain that lit up in brain scans when people watched their favorite

candidates get attacked. Other scientists hooked up wires to measure

frowns and smiles before the meaning of the ads' words sunk in. Mostly,

researchers found that negative ads tend to polarize and make it less

likely that supporters of an attacked candidate will vote.

 

" Everyone says, 'We hate them, they're terrible,' " said psychology

professor George Bizer of Union College in Schenectady, N.Y.

 

However, he added, " They seem to work. "

 

And politicians know it because the latest figures show that by nearly a

10-to-1 ratio, political parties are spending more money on negative ads

than positive ones.

 

Iacoboni's research usually has little to do with politics. At UCLA, he

uses a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine to do brain mapping.

 

However, in 2004, he and a political scientist studied the brains of

supporters of

 

President Bush

<http://search.news./search/news/?p=President+Bush> and Sen.

 

John Kerry <http://search.news./search/news/?p=John+Kerry>

during the presidential campaign.

 

When the test subjects saw a picture of the candidate they supported,

the medial orbital frontal cortex of the brain --- the area behind the

eyeballs associated with empathy --- lit up.

 

When they were shown a picture or TV ad for the candidate they opposed,

the island-shaped insula in the middle of the brain lit up along with

other areas " associated with distaste, " Iacoboni said. Then, other parts

of the brain activated, as if the participants were " using their

rational brain areas to get upset at the other guy; they were using it

to find a reason " to dislike the candidate, Iacoboni said.

 

Repeating his original work later in the campaign after people had seen

a flurry of negative ads on both sides, empathy for their own candidates

just disappeared, indicating they no longer identified so much with

their candidate.

 

" The more you are bombarded by ads, the more you are going to be

affected by that, " Iacoboni said. " It's even philosophical --- how much

of free will do we have? "

 

Negative ads make supporters of the attacker more likely to vote and

followers of the victimized candidate depressed and less likely to vote,

said Stanford University communications professor Shanto Iyengar,

co-author of the book " Going Negative: How Political Advertisements

Shrink and Polarize the Electorate. "

 

But the attack ads don't do much to independents, said Iyengar, who is

finishing a study on people's reactions to positive and negative ads in

seven close and nasty U.S. Senate races that will be decided on Tuesday.

His online study measured " the basic gut feeling, the emotional

reaction, " of Democrats, Republicans and independents as they watched

the ads, he said.

 

An attack ad of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Harold Ford of

Tennessee which featured a bare-shouldered blonde woman who spoke of

meeting the African-American Ford at a Playboy party " is pulling people

into separate camps, " Iyengar said. Republicans reacted positively to

the add, seeming energized to vote, he said, while Democrats reacted

negatively, which could keep them from voting. Independents stayed near

neutral.

 

These ads do not get people to switch sides, Iyengar said. " You can't

get them to vote for you, but maybe you can get them to stay home. "

 

What makes these ads work, Iyengar said, are " emotional triggers. "

 

Those triggers reach into our brains faster than words, ideas and

rational thought, said Williams College political science professor

George Marcus. Marcus, president of the International Society of

Political Psychology, has hooked people up to wires to measure frowns

and smiles when they see campaign material and found that people respond

to ads emotionally after about 80 milliseconds. It takes another 300

milliseconds before the words and issues hit the consciousness.

 

Bizer said his studies, which used fictional candidates, showed that

when people form opinions based on negatives instead of positives, they

are less likely to change their minds.

 

These ads allow people to take the easy way out, not studying issues and

just relying on emotions, Iyengar said.

 

" If more people realized that this was all a question of pushing the

right buttons ... I think there would be a realization that maybe I

ought to sit down, take the time and study up on the issues, " he said.

 

___

 

On the Net:

 

The new Stanford study on negative and positive ads in close senate races:

 

http://pcl-wp.stanford.edu/s7/

<http://us.rd./dailynews/ap/ap_on_sc/storytext/political_ads_science/20\

823241/SIG=1102dl2qa/*http://pcl-wp.stanford.edu/s7/>