It's Friday, February 23rd, 2024.

I'm Albert Moller and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

Okay, let me ask you to confront yourself

with an honest question.

Do you respond more powerfully

to a positive political ad or to a negative political ad.

Oh, I know you think of yourself as a positive person and you're wanting to say that you

respond more clearly to a positive political ad, but the research shows you're probably

lying to yourself. Most of us it turns out seem to respond more viscerally to a

negative political ad than to a positive political ad.

Now, that might be a bit of an overstatement

because what we're really talking about

is what kind of advertising tends to move the vote or to move the polling data.

And this is where it comes down to the fact that the negative ads are now gaining ascendancy

over so-called positive ads because the negative ads tend to have

more demonstrable effect and that's why you're seeing a lot more of them.

You don't see that many ads with a politician saying or someone saying on behalf of a politician this person's done a great job

Instead you see ads of someone coming on saying this person if elected will bring an end to the human race all ice cream will melt and more children will be lost in the woods I mean that is basically the way this kind of advertising game is played it is important to recognize that this is not entirely new, but at the same time it's also kind of important to recognize it is newly urgent and the evidence is pretty newly overwhelming.

Gerald Saib wrote an interesting article on this for the Wall Street Journal.

He's asking the question, what have negative political ads done to us? The sub-band in the article is this, candidates increasingly rely on

personal attacks and fear-mongering to win office, leaving many Americans disillusioned with

democracy. And so as Gerald Seib is asking the question, what have negative

...