ABSTRACT
Some electoral campaign advertisements (or “ads”) appeal to fear, like the now infamous 1964 “daisy chain ad” run by the Lyndon Johnson campaign, suggesting in rather unsubtle terms that we’d all soon be dead if his Republican rival Barry Goldwater became president. The 1988 “furlough” ad, promising that violent rapists would soon be running America’s streets if Democrat Michael Dukakis was elected instead of Republican George H.W. Bush, had a similar objective (though this time the Republicans were the ones who used crude fearmongering). Others ads are more uplifting, inspiring hope and enthusiasm, like many of those run by the Obama campaign when he first ran for president in 2008 or Bill Clinton’s “A Place Called Hope” ad in 1992. Ted Brader notes that we know remarkably little about the psychological processes which underlie successful advertising, but the short answer is that the most successful ones appeal to our emotions. What Brader calls “unimpas-sionated ads”—communications which simply convey information without trying to stir up people’s passions—are very much the exception, because we know (even on an intuitive level, without even referring to political psychology) that emotionless ads generally don’t work. Brader argues that “campaign ads affect voters by appealing to their emotions … campaign ads use symbolic images and evocative music to trigger an emotional response in viewers. By appealing to different emotions, ads can influence the participation and choices of viewers in distinct ways,” Brader argues. “Enthusiasm appeals motivate voters to get involved and act on existing loyalties, while fear appeals provoke viewers to seek out new information and reconsider their choices,” he adds. 1
