Cognitive processing of television political advertisements: The mediating effects of expertise on memory and evaluation

Television political advertising has become the primary medium for delivering political candidates' messages. The effect of these messages was shown to be mediated by a range of factors. This study utilized a cognitive processing model to assess how messages have a variable impact on potential voters based on their levels of political expertise.;An experiment was conducted varying advertisement valence, advertisement content, and level of political expertise as independent variables. Dependent variables were memory and evaluation for political advertisements and candidates. A total of 136 undergraduates were randomly assigned to eight groups. Each subject filled out a knowledge pretest, watched television ads, evaluated the candidates and advertisements, and then took a posttest.;Experts exhibited superior recall for information than nonexperts. Experts remembered the most information from the image messages; novices remembered most from issues. Positive advertisements were remembered more than negative. However, when negative was combined with issue, the negative-issue messages were better remembered by novices than any other type of combination.;Expertise is less discriminating when the focus is on evaluation instead of memory. Candidate character was evaluated most favorably in positive and issue television political advertisements. Positive-issue advertisements evoked the most emotional evaluations. Additionally, it was the positive, not the negative spots, which participants at all levels of expertise evaluated as most informative.;The implications of the increasing use of negative political advertisements in today's political campaign has not changed the political environment that citizens are operating in but has changed the citizens in the current political environment. The increasing use of negative television political advertisements has created an unintended effect on citizens, which I call cognitive coping. Many citizens are so annoyed with the "politics as usual" game that they simply turn off their brains when confronted with a negative advertisement. Even when television is used to communicate political truth, the truth is being negatively packaged - attacking the opponent's character and record rather than supporting one's own. Negative television political advertising is, thereby, creating an unintended effect on democratic citizens trying to do their civic duty of cognitively processing political information.