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Party affiliation, political ad perceptions and political
involvement: Evidence from the 2004 Presidential campaign
Sangki Lee
Doctoral Student
Fuyuan Shen
Assistant Professor
College of Communications
The Penn State University
Address correspondence to the first author at
115 Carnegie Building
University Park, PA 16802-5101
814.574.1703
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Paper submitted to the Mass Communication and Society Division, the
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Annual
Meeting, San Antonio, Texas, 2005.
0
Party affiliation, political ad perceptions and political involvement
Party affiliation, political ad perceptions and political
involvement: Evidence from the 2004 Presidential campaign
(Abstract)
This research used a data from a survey during the 2004 presidential
campaigns found that party affiliation was a significant factor in
how individuals perceived the negativity and truthfulness of
political ads. Specifically we found that people respond to negative
political ads in accordance with their partisanship. Furthermore, it
was found that party affiliation has significant effects on how
negative perceptions of ads influence political involvement.
Theoretical and practical implications of these findings will be addressed.
Party affiliation, political ad perceptions and political
participation: Evidence from the 2004 Presidential campaign
Negative political ads and their effects on elections and candidates
has been a subject of research and public debate almost since its
inception. Over the years, there has been a substantial body of
evidence showing that under various conditions, negative political
ads can have serious and damaging effects on the targeted candidate .
Several studies have focused on how political attack ads influence
voters' intention to vote for the target candidate, with a majority
of the results indicating that negative ads might lower voting
intentions . Negative political advertising might also lead to
backlash causing decreased liking and voting intent for the candidate
sponsoring the negative ads . More recently, scholars have probed the
unintended effect of negative advertising asserting that negative
political ads could drive people away from polls and engendered
distrust in government and the democratic processes .
Although a substantial body of studies found negative consequences of
attacks ads on voters, overall finings regarding influences of
negative political ads have generated somewhat inconsistent results.
In contrast of Ansolabehere and Iyengar's (1995) findings, some
studies, which analyzed NES voting data, indicated that exposure to
negative political ads did not produce any demobilized effects on
voters . This inconsistency might be emerged because one of important
variables which significantly moderates the effect of negative
political advertising. One of the variables might be voter's party
affiliation .
Past studies found that party-bias effects substantially moderate
voters' evaluation of competing candidates. By reinforcing support
for affiliated candidates and reducing support for opponent
candidates, voters' party identification leads their preference
toward candidates more polarized . In the similar vein,
Chang suggested that voters' party affiliation decide how they
respond to political ads which sponsored by competing candidates. He
found that respondents showed consistent patterns of perceptions
pertaining to evaluations of political ads in accordance with their
party orientation. In particular, voters indicated that they favored
the negative ads which sponsored by their affiliated party than the
ads which sponsored by opponent party .
Based on the reviewed evidence regarding party-bias effects on
voters, this study attempts to explore how voters' party affiliation
moderate their perceptions of negative political ads as well as the
relative influence of negative perceptions of political ads on
political involvement. In particular, this study predicts that party
affiliation facilitates people's selective information processing and
facilitated biased information processing makes people respond to
negative political ads in selective way. Furthermore, it is also
predicted that reinforced attitude through selective information
processing consequently influences people's level of political involvement.
To examine these propositions, we analyzed a data from a survey
during the 2004 presidential campaigns. By taking major advantages of
survey method, we hope that we can test ongoing conflicting results
regarding the influence of negative political advertising in real
campaign environments and we can provide a clearer picture of the
consequence of negative political advertising through examining a
moderating role of party affiliation in political campaign.
Party identification and negative perceptions of political advertising
Bartels indicated that party identification has strong effects on
perceptions of the political world. According to him, party
affiliation is "a pervasive dynamic force shaping citizens'
perceptions of, and reactions to, the political world. Partisan bias
in political perceptions plays a crucial role in perpetuating and
reinforcing sharp differences in opinion between Democrats and
Republicans." (Bartels, 2002, p. 138). Regarding the influence of
partisanship in perceptions of political information, Campbell,
Converse, Miller, and Stokes argued that party identification
facilitate a perceptual screen through which the individual tends to
see is favorable to his party orientation. In the similar vein,
Zaller claimed that individual has a tendency to accept information
which is congenial to their partisan values and to reject information
which is not.
The effects of partisanship also have been explored under political
advertising framework. Some studies regarding the role of
partisanship in political advertising indicated that voter's party
identification has strong influences on voter's candidate preference
. Regardless of using positive or negative political ads, voter's
evaluation or preference of competing candidates is to be polarized.
This phenomena might be attained through strengthening support for
affiliated candidate and reducing support for opposed candidates .
Ansolabehere & Iyengar argued that individual's vote-preference
was reinforced in the line with their party identification after they
were exposed to political ads. After exposure to campaign ads,
participants showed reinforced vote-preference toward their
supporting candidate. Similarly, Faber, Tims, and Schmitt (1990)
found that participants showed their voting support for competing
candidates was polarized in accordance with their party orientation.
Party identification also moderated the way people to evaluate
political advertising messages. Ansolabehere & Iyengar suggested
that voters' party orientation has been reported to influence how
they process political campaign information including political ads.
According to Chang , the tendency to accept pro-attitudinal
information and avoid counter-attitudinal information induce biased
information processing of political advertising message, and this
biased processing can be explained by the notion of
selective-processing. Basically, this notion argued that processing
bias is a function of perceiver's existing attitude . Empirical
studies on biased information search in decision making have been
predominantly carried out within the framework of dissonance theory .
Festinger (1957) suggested that people have a tendency to avoid or
evade threatening messages for averting cognitive dissonance. This
premise has been supported by several studies which found that people
actively attempt to seek out complementary information and avoid
dissonance-producing information . This type of biased information
processing helps people to reinforce their readily established
attitude or preference as well as to be comfortable without cognitive
dissonance. To achieve this status under exposure to political
advertising, it has been predicted that people may pay more attention
to evaluative consistent information and avoid evaluative
inconsistent information .
Regarding the party bias effects on perception of political ads, in
particular, Chang found that when participants were exposed to
political adverting, they liked the ads were sponsored by a
supporting candidate more than the ads sponsored by a competing
candidate. Participants also perceived that the ads sponsored by
their affiliated party were more persuasive than the ads sponsored by
their competing party. In line with Chang's specific findings and
general evidence of selective-processing literature, the current
study predicts that respondents are more likely perceive that
political ads which are critical of a supporting candidate are more
negative and less truthful than the ads which are critical of a
competing candidate. Driven by existing preference and attitude,
people are likely to bias their perceptions of political ads in the
line with their political affiliation. As the research evidence
indicated, when people have preexisting positive attitude toward
their supporting candidate, they are less likely to accept the
negative messages about their supporting candidate and may perceive
the attack messages as more negative because this negative messages
are evaluative inconsistent information and produce cognitively
dissonant information. Similarly, this biased response to political
ads may influence participants' evaluation of message truthfulness.
That is, it is plausible to predict that voters are likely to
perceive the attack ads against their supporting candidate are less
truthful than the ads against a competing candidate. Based on these
predictions, this study proposes the following hypotheses:
H1: Respondents are likely to perceive that the ads attacking a
candidate nominated by their supporting party are more negative than
the ads against a candidate nominated by competing party.
H2: Respondents are likely to perceive that the ads attacking a
candidate nominated by their supporting party are less truthful than
the ads against a candidate nominated by competing party.
Negative perceptions of political advertising and political involvement
Past studies indicated that negative advertising might be more
remembered than positive advertising (Faber et al., 1993). One
plausible explanation of this phenomenon might be found from Gestalt
principles. Lau suggested that negative information may be
inconsistent to what people are accustomed to and expect from
advertising messages. As a result, negative information may stand out
disproportionately. Furthermore, negative information is more likely
to be weighted heavily than positive information in forming
evaluations . Therefore, the information in negative political
advertising may play an important role in candidate preference
decision. Although negative ads were expected to have stronger
effects on voter's preference decisions than were positive ads, it is
premature to confirm this idea. In general, voters do not like to be
exposed to negative political ads , and "a backlash effect may result
if voters disapprove of a candidate using negative appeals." (Faber
et al., 1993, p. 68). If it is so, what factor needs to be considered
to explain this potentially bidirectional effects of negative ads?
Political involvement may be one moderating variable to do it.
Although there are disagreements over how we define involvement , it
has been generally regarded as an important mediator of the effects
of political advertising . Faber et al. argued that political
involvement is positively related with the degree of impact which
negative advertising exerts. They found people who are more involved
and interested are most influenced by negative ads. However, some
studies in which involvement was conceptualized as a characteristic
of voters, indicated conflicting evidence regarding the effects of
involvement under the realm of political advertising. For example,
while Hofstetter, Zukin, and Buss argued that voters who less
involved learn more from political ads, others indicated that highly
involved voters recall political ads more . To attempt to examine
mechanisms of this inconsistency, this paper considered party-bias
effects again. As mentioned before, voter's party affiliation plays a
role as a perceptual screen. By using this perceptual filter, voters
tend to accept information which is congenial to their partisan
values and to reject information which is not .
Based on this rational, it is plausible to expect that voters might
pay attention to, and involve in processing negative political
information differently in accordance of their party affiliation. In
particular, voters are likely to involve in processing information
within negative ads against affiliated candidates than the
information in the ads against opponent candidates because the former
information is much more critical of their partisan values than is
the later information.
More specifically, it is expected that the perceived negativity of
ads attacking affiliated candidates increase voters' political
involveemnt. However, in the case of perceived truthfulness of ads
against affiliated candidates, this paper expect a reverse
relationship because truthful information which describe voters'
affiliated candidate negatively is counter to what they want to see
from political ads and their favored partisan values. Due to tendency
to reject or avoid information which is not congenial to their
partisan values, perceived truthfulness of ads against affiliated
candidates may reduce voter's involvement. In contrast, because
overall information about opponent candidate is relatively not
important to their partisan values, the effects of negative
perceptions of ads attacking opponent candidates may not be strong on
involvement. To explore these predictions, this study proposes the
following hypotheses.
H3: Perceived negativity of political ads will be significantly
related with involvement in accordance with party affiliation.
Specifically, the perceived negativity of ads against affiliated
candidates will be positively related with involvement, while the
perceived negativity of ads attacking competing candidates will not
have strong influence on involvement.
H4: Perceived truthfulness of political ads will be significantly
related with involvement in accordance with party affiliation.
Specifically, the perceived truthfulness of ads against affiliated
candidates will be negatively related with involvement, while the
perceived truthfulness of ads attacking competing candidates will not
have strong influence on involvement.
Method
A telephone survey was conducted in State College in Pennsylvania. A
systematic random sample was drawn to increase the likelihood of
representative sampling. The survey was completed within 3 days, from
Nov. 23 to Nov. 25, before the Presidential Election Day in 2004. On
campus phone numbers and business numbers were eliminated from the
sample in this community. The sample drawn (after elimination of
nonassigned numbers) comprised 1,166 numbers, 394 interviews were
completed, and resulting completion rate was 33.80 %.
Measurements
The questionnaire was designed to include questions on perceptions of
negative political advertising including perceived frequency,
negativity, and truthfulness of the ads, political cynicism, party
affiliation, and demographics.
Negative advertising perceptions. Three variables including perceived
frequency, negativity, and truthfulness were measured to gauge
respondents' perceptions of attack advertising. To estimate how a
party identification influences on the way respondents evaluate or
interpret attack advertising that were critical of John Kerry or
George W. Bush, respondents were asked to indicate their perceived
frequency, negativity, and truthfulness of attack ads, which were
critical of the both candidates.
Perceived frequency of negative ads was measured by asking
respondents the following question: "How often would you say that
you've seen attack ads that are critical of John Kerry (or George W.
Bush)?" This question employed 4 points scale such as 3 (Frequently),
2 (Sometimes), 1 (Rarely), and 0 (Never). To assess the perceived
negativity and truthfulness of negative ads, they were asked to
answer to the questions, such as "How positive or negative do you
feel about these ads that are critical of Kerry (or Bush)?" and "In
your opinion, how truthful or untruthful is the information contained
in these ads that are critical of Kerry (or Bush)?" Both of these
questions employed scales ranging from 4 (Very negative) to 1 (Very
positive) and from 4 (Very truthful) to 1 (Very untruthful).
Party affiliation. Respondents were asked to indicate the party with
which they identified. Four options were listed to choose
respondents' party orientation including Democrats, Republicans,
Independents, and Other. Among 374 respondents who identified
themselves with one of categories, 169 respondents (45.2%) answered
they were Democrats, 156 respondents (41.7%) were Republicans. Only
33 respondents (8.8%) identified themselves as Independents and 16
respondents (4.3%) chose other.
Involvement. According to Zaichkowsky , involvement can be understood
as three different types: physical, enduring, and situational
involvements. In the studies of political advertising, physical
involvement may reflect the level of election race . While enduring
involvement refer to a relatively long-term, inherent interest in a
message, situational involvement reflect a temporary relevance of a
specific object or concern with a short-term outcome . When
discussing political elections, enduring involvement might refer to a
voter's general interest in politics while situational involvement
would reflect concern about the outcome of specific election .
In this study, the following two items were used to measure the
concept of involvement: (1) "How interested have you been in the
political campaigns so far this year?"; (2) " How important is the
outcome of the presidential election to you?" Four-point scales were
used to measure responses to aforementioned two questions. The both
items were combined into a single involvement index. The Cronbach's
alpha for involvement index was .65, indicating that two scores form
a reliable index.
Results
Hypothesis 1 and 2 predicted that perceived ads negativity and
truthfulness would vary as a function of people's party
identification. To explore these hypotheses, separate ANOVA tests
were run with party affiliation as a fixed factor and the perceived
negativity and truthfulness of the ads attacking either Bush or Kerry
as the dependent variables. Results showed that that people who
identified themselves as Democrats perceived that the ads attacking
Kerry were more negative, M = 2.11, than did people who identified
themselves as Republican, M = 1.39, F(1, 233) = 47.72, p < .001.
Similarly, Republicans perceived that the ads were critical of Bush
were more negative, M = 2.32, than did Democrats, M = 1.67, F(1, 233)
= 29.85, p < .001.
Furthermore, it was found that Democrats perceived the ads attacking
Kerry as less truthful, M = 1.89, than did Republicans, M = 2.82,
F(1, 233) = 79.68, p < .001. Similarly, Republican evaluated the ads
attacking Bush were less truthful, M = 2.24, than did Democrat, M =
2.84, F(1, 233) = 28.61, p < .001. In light these findings, we
therefore conclude that both Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2 were fully
supported. The means and standard deviations of above analyses were
summarized in Table 1.
___________________________
Table 1 about here
___________________________
To test the relative influence of ad perceptions on respondents'
political involvement, we ran two separate multiple regressions with
political involvement as a dependent variable. To test Hypothesis 3,
the perceived negativity against Kerry and Bush ads was entered as
independent variables, and for testing Hypothesis 4, the perceived
truthfulness of ads against Kerry and Bush was used as independent
variables. In addition, we used a block of control variables that
included the perceived frequency of ads against both candidates. The
control variables were entered in the first, and it was followed by
the predictor variable.
To explore the effects of partisanship on relationships between ads
perceptions and involvement, this study analyzed the relationships
based on their party identification. For respondents who identified
themselves as Democrats, Hierarchical Multiple Regression revealed
that the full regression equation with control variables and
perceived campaign negativity was significant on political
involvement, F(4, 127) = 5.40, p < .001, R2 = .15. The results also
indicated that the same regression model with two variables of
perceived truthfulness of ads as independent variables was
significant on the involvement, F(4, 132) = 2.80, p < .05, R2 = .08.
There was no significant control variable identified. As predicted,
respondents' negative ads perceptions are significantly related with
involvement. The results indicated that negativity of ads against
Kerry was positively related with involvement, while truthfulness of
ads against Kerry was negatively related with involvement. Negativity
and truthfulness of ads against Bush were not significantly related
with involvement. The results of all above analysis were displayed in Table 2.
___________________________
Table 2 about here
___________________________
For respondents who identified themselves as Republican, Hierarchical
Multiple Regression showed similar patterns of results which we found
above. The full regression equation with control variables and
perceived campaign negativity was significant on political
involvement, F(4, 122) = 5.46, p < .001, R2 = .15. The results also
indicated that the same regression model with two perceived
truthfulness of ads as independent variables was significant on the
involvement, F(4, 116) = 5.72, p < .001, R2 = .17. The results
indicated that two control variables, perceived frequencies of ads
against Kerry and against Bush, as significant predictors of
Republican's involvement. However, frequency of attacks ads against
Kerry was negatively related with involvement, while frequency of
attacks ads against Bush was negatively related with it. As
predicted, Republicans' negative perceptions of political ads are
significantly related with involvement. The results indicated that
negativity of ads against Bush was positively related with
involvement, while truthfulness of ads against Bush was negatively
related with it. Negativity and truthfulness of ads against Kerry
were not significantly related with involvement. The results of all
above analysis were displayed in Table 3. Therefore, Hypothesis 3 and
4 were fully supported.
___________________________
Table 3 about here
___________________________
Discussion
This paper set out to examine how party affiliation affects audience
evaluations of political ads by political candidates. Using data from
a survey during the 2004 presidential election, we found that voter's
party affiliation moderated their perceptions of negative political
ads. When responses of participants who identified with either
Democrats or Republicans were analyzed separately, interesting and
consistent results emerged. The results indicated that party
affiliation was a significant factor in how individuals perceived the
negativity and truthfulness of political ads. Specifically we found
that Democrats rated attack ads by the Bush campaigns significantly
more negative and less truthful than Republicans. Similarly,
Republicans evaluated ads by Kerry as more negative and less
truthful. It is important to note that these results confirm the idea
that voters evaluate or perceive negative political ads in selective
way and this selective information processing might reinforce their
preexisting attitude. These results further support Zaller 's
idea that party affiliation plays a role as a perceptual screen
which people tend to evaluate information in favorable way to their
party orientation. In addition, these results were consistent with
Chang (2003)' findings that voters' preexisting attitude or
preference toward candidates who they support and who they don't
influences how they response to political ads.
This paper also explored how party affiliation affects the
relationship between negative perceptions of ads and the level of
political involvement. The results indicated that party affiliation
is a significant factor to moderate how negative political
advertising influence voters' political involvement. As expected,
when we analyzed responses separately by their party affiliation,
consistent patters of results emerged. Specifically perceived
negativity of ads attacking affiliated candidates increased voters'
political involvement and perceived truthfulness of ads against
affiliated candidates reduced voter's involvement, while both
perceived negativity and truthfulness of ads against opponent
candidates did not have significant effects on involvement. This
evidence also support the role of party orientation as "a perceptual
screen", and the idea that party affiliation make people process
information in selective way . It is important to note that when
responses of all subjects without considering their party
affiliation, were analyzed, perceived negativity and perceived
truthfulness of attack ads did not exert significant influences on
political involvement. Only when the responses were analyzed
separately by their party identification, significant effects which
were consistent were emerged. Therefore, if party affiliation was not
considered in analyses, this study might not found any significant
effects of negative political advertising on political involvement.
Taken together, these findings mean that the nature or tone of
political ads variable as people's political affiliations differ.
This indicates negativity or truthfulness is a relative concept. As
this study found, subjectivity emerged from individual party
affiliation, substantially moderated voters' responses to negative
advertising and the influence of negative advertising on involvement
under the realm of political campaign. Therefore, these finings
recommend that future research attempting to explore the consequence
of political ads may need to take into account various moderating
variables including party affiliation to explain variance of the
effects of political ads on voters. We hope that theses results may
contribute to explain inconsistent findings regarding how political
ads affect voter's decisions.
Although the findings from the present research are important, there
are several limitations we need address. First, we used self-reported
exposure. Although we controlled perceived frequency of exposure to
negative ads in all analyses we did, the self-reported score was
likely to be exaggerated. Because negative information is more likely
to be weighted heavily than positive information in forming
evaluations and people tend to more actively accept information
which is critical of their partisan value , depending on how strongly
people identify themselves with their affiliated party, their
self-reported score might be elevated substantially. Therefore, this
elevated score might affect our findings. In the similar vein,
findings that were related with all negative ads perceptions
variables including frequency, negativity, and truthfulness should be
carefully interpreted.
Second, although we controlled for two variables of perceived
frequency in the regression models, other factors could account for
variance of involvement we have observed. In light of these findings,
we suggest that future research replicate these findings in different
campaigns or explore other factors that might be significant
mediators of political involvement.
References
Table 1.
Negativity and truthfulness of Ads against Kerry or Bush
Ads against Kerry
Ads against Bush
Negativity
Truthfulness
Negativity
Truthfulness
Democrat
M
2.11
1.89
1.67
2.84
SD
.07
.07
.08
.07
Republican
M
1.39
2.82
2.32
2.24
SD
.07
.07
.08
.08
Table 2.
Regression equations predicting influence of negative perception on
Democrat's involvement
Equation 1
Equation 2
Equation 3
Control variables
Frequency of attacks ads against Kerry
.15
.13
.13
Frequency of attacks ads against Bush
-.02
.01
-.01
Predictor Variable
Negativity of Kerry ads
.34***
Negativity of Bush ads
-.18
Truthfulness of Kerry ads
-.23**
Truthfulness of Bush ads
.09
R2
.02
.15
.08
Note: *p <.05, **p <.01, or *** p < .001. N = 131
Table 3.
Regression equations predicting influence of negative perception on
Republican's involvement
Equation 1
Equation 2
Equation 3
Control variables
Frequency of attacks ads against Kerry
-.27**
-.21*
-.26**
Frequency of attacks ads against Bush
.24**
.19*
.18
Predictor Variable
Negativity of Kerry ads
-.12
Negativity of Bush ads
.28**
Truthfulness of Kerry ads
.11
Truthfulness of Bush ads
-.25**
R2
.08
.15
.17
Note: *p <.05, **p <.01, or *** p < .001. N = 131
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