Bernie Going Negative

When Bernie Sanders launched his campaign on CSPAN he proclaimed:

Ask the people of Vermont, they will tell you, “Bernie Sanders has never run a negative ad.” I hate and detest these 30 second ugly negative ads.

Lately it’s hard to argue that Bernie has not gone more negative against Clinton, he often is caught bringing up her record, her Wall Street ties, speeches, and overall practices in a pejorative manner with increased frequency.

So what has changed? Certainly Bernie has stuck to his guns by not publishing televised attack ads but has began more and more spreading negative information about Clinton. From the days of “We don’t care about your damn emails” down to pressing Hillary to release her speeches something has clearly changed.

Lucky us, the political science research is rather explicit on this point: negative information works. Let’s break down a few ways this works after listing the scholars that comment on negative information.

Table 1. Negative Political Information Scholarship

Author (year)	Description of Method and Key Findings
Garramone (1984)	Random telephone interviews of 211 mid-Michigan voters in 1982 congressional campaign found that older voters and voters that are more educated react contrary to the goals of a political attack advertisement.
Newhagen & Reeves (1988)	Surveyed respondents before and after negative ads were issued and found an impact in candidate recognition, but negative thoughts about the information which, when it wore off, would leave a positive result for the now recognizable candidate.
Marcus & Mackuen (1993)	Examined the American National Election Studies (ANES) panel of 1980 and a commercial survey during the 1988 presidential campaign. Found that one’s mood can influence their political emotions for particular candidates.
Skaperdas & Grofman (1995)	Game theoretic analysis of the strategies behind campaign tactics of using positive or negative information. Found that candidates rarely punch down and commonly punch up with negative information.
Iyengar & Ansolabehere (1995)	Through paid respondents qualitative and quantitative analysis, authors found that advertising is “not as egalitarian a form of campaign communication as expected” and that advertisements only reach better-informed candidates – thus shrinking and polarizing the electorate.
Freedman & Goldstein (1999)	Uses different measurements of respondent viewing behavior and ad tone to suggest that negative ads seem to invigorate someone to vote.
Redlawsk (2002)	Oftentimes voters, when subjected to negative advertisements, think through ways of why the advertisement is wrong. That is, the targets of negative adds often fail to be persuaded otherwise, but rather enforced by argument processing.
Brader (2005)	In an experimental analysis of respondents’ emotions, author found that ad images and music could evoke enthusiasm or vigilance in voters.
Taber & Lodge (2006)	Through experimental evaluation, participants showed both confirmation bias in their own beliefs on gun control and affirmative action whilst also showing disconfirmation bias when faced with information other than their own previously held beliefs.
Lau, Sigelman, Rovner (2007)	Using a meta-analytic reexamination of the relevant literature, Lau (et al.) confirms again that negative political information does not repress voter turnout. Even going so far as to say negative information increases campaign knowledge.
Martin (2008)	By using the 1974 National Election Study along with the Center for Political Studies’ content analysis of newspapers, author found that negative news could bring forth public political participation.
Redlawsk et al. (2010)	Reexamines past research to find when might someone reach the “tipping point” of their negative advertisement persuasion. Shows, through experimental methods, that no such tipping point exists.
Weinschenk & Panagopoulos (2014)	Examined a survey experiment (N= 724), authors found that those with the personality trait of extroversion were more likely to be motivated by negative messages whereas those with the personality trait of agreeableness were less likely when compared to their counterparts.

As you see, most of negative political science literature supports what’s called the “stimulation hypothesis” (as opposed to the demobilization hypothesis) that negative political information drives action rather than depresses it. One example is Lau (et al.’s) 2007 meta analysis that found a strong favor for the stimulation hypothesis among political science data and research.

Oftentimes negative information is not used to convert the “other”to their side but rather to mobilize the already supporting electorate. So Bernie is using negative information to further mobilize his grassroots movement rather than using negative information to convert Clinton supporters (yet that wouldn’t hurt either).

Actually, very rarely do campaign advertisements change someone’s mind about their political candidate. If there is any doubt of this, just try and send Bernie campaign footage to a Donald Trump supporter – good luck.

So while Bernie may be using negative information to drive his own supporters and “stimulate” politics, how might his tactic of sticking to positive information in televised advertisements yield any utility?

Well, while the literature is lacking for positive political information (I suppose it’s not attractive enough for publication) , there is some literature to support positive information’s positive influence.

Table 2. Positive Information Scholarship

Author (year)	Description of Method and Key Findings
Isen & Means (1983)	Subjects were asked to make a choice on several options of cars, those who received positive feedback about a prior task made decisions more quickly than those who had not received the positive feedback.
Maheswaran, & Meyers-Levy (1990)	Research in marketing found that “positively framed messages may be more persuasive when there is little emphasis on detailed processing, but negatively framed messages may be more persuasive when detailed processing is emphasized.”
Alvarez (1998)	Alvarez wrote a book on how the more a voter knows about a candidate, the more they are to support the “devil they know.” This exists even controlling for political differences and various other traits.
Ashby & Isen (1999)	Theory suggests that increased dopamine levels in the brain from positive affect may lead to creative problem solving among other positive side effects.
Fredrickson (2001)	Found that a “broaden-and-build” theory might be true, that positive emotions may “broaden momentary thought–action repertoires, which in turn serves to build their enduring personal resources, ranging from physical and intellectual resources to social and psychological resources.”
Fredrickson (2004)	Further research in psychology created distinctions between positive emotions versus moods. Here Fredrickson expands and solidifies the argument for the “broaden-and-build” theory of positive emotions.

The scholarship on positive information found in many marketing journals (and health journals oddly enough) enforce the same results for different reasons. Positive information too drives political turnout often in the form of short-term boots of motivation and positive moods. Also, increasing the voter familiarity with the candidate helps humanize them and ultimately endorse them regardless of political ideology (Alvarez 1998).

In the end what can be taken away from this is that both positive and negative political information drive political turnout for different reasons including moods, knowledge, and strategy. Ultimately, any political information is good information to get your voice and message out to the public – no matter the vehicle.

So is it good that Bernie increased his negative political information output? Absolutely, negative messaging builds up a passionate electorate to ultimately turnout and vote – which we’ve seen in increased numbers since the start of Bernie’s campaign (thanks political science!)

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I’ve written an essay that’s over 30 pages covering this topic in far more detail (that it deserves). Feel free to email me at MailKyleDavis@gmail.com for a final copy of the unpublished work. I hope to continue this topic in the future, adding more psychology research and ultimately analyze this topic at a neurological level.