Attitudinal effects of character‐based versus competence‐based negative political communications

Abstract

Many political communications are negative in nature, but not much is known of the situations in which such communications are more damaging to the targeted political candidate. We hypothesized and experimentally demonstrated that (a) negative political communications are more successful in damaging overall voter attitudes toward the targeted candidate than positive communications are in raising such attitudes, (b) such negative communications are more effective in changing those beliefs about the targeted candidate that concern character (likability and trustworthiness) than in modifying competence (expertise‐related) beliefs, and (c) these attitude‐changing effects are greater when voters form their overall attitudes toward the targeted candidate more on the basis of character beliefs than competence ones. Implications of these results are discussed for public policy and for attitude theory.