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Barack Obama |
When democratic operative Paul Begala made a donation to the Obama campaign this year, he wrote in the memo field of the check "for negative campaigning only." As much as candidates and voters complain about negative ads, the ads persist because, as Begala knows, they work.
A team of researchers from three business schools has published a study that suggests why. It turns out that it's much easier to build coalitions around what the researchers call "negational identity," or what people are not.
"Simply reminding people of what they are not can transform attitudes towards different groups, shift loyalties and political preferences," write the researchers in the November 2008 issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
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The researchers, Chen-Bo Zhong of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, Adam Galinsky of the Kellogg School Management at Northwestern University and Miguel Unzueta of the UCLA Anderson School of Management, divided groups of Asian and Latino students into two subgroups.
Half of the students were asked to write about being Asian or Latino in the U.S. The other half were asked to write about being non-white in the U.S.
Then they were asked whom they preferred in the Democratic primary, Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama. (The study was done before the Iowa caucuses.)
Those who wrote about their own specific race chose Hilary Clinton by a large margin (68% of Asians, 58% of Latinos). But the results were reversed among those who were told to write about being non-white. They chose Obama by similarly large margins (63% of Asians, 58% of Latinos).
The researchers suggest that the act of writing about being non-white stirred a negational affinity with Obama in those participants. "It's very easy for people to figure out who they are not," says Adam Galinsky, a social psychologist who is a professor of ethics and decision management. "Easier than for people to figure out who they are."
It's easier in part because negational identity allows people to define themselves, even if only vaguely. If you say who you are not, you receive the benefits of being part of a group without being pigeonholed into something specific.
The findings dovetail with research that shows that people remember negative things said about others much better than they remember positive things. Evolutionarily, that makes sense--avoiding something that might steal your dinner or kill you is usually a very, very good idea. Positive attributes and associations may be useful. Negative ones, however, may be catastrophic.
The researchers cite historical examples of negational identity on a large scale. Iranians of different ethnic groups were able to coalesce around the idea of being non-Sunni and, later, around being non-Jews in forging a national identity.
"Negational identification can be a significant prelude to cooperation among formerly warring factions," write the researchers.
Galinsky suggests that this kind of approach could be used to unite minorities in the U.S. who may have similar political and social aims but haven't leveraged their collective power.
The researchers don't suggest that either presidential campaign start running ads that focus on race, of course. But the conclusions do suggest that the Obama campaign would be more successful in wooing disappointed Clinton supporters by emphasizing how non-Republican Obama is, says Galinsky rather "than trying to say how wonderful it is to be a Democrat."
McCain campaign's strategy of characterizing Obama as extremely liberal, by contrast, is spot-on. It will be much easier for McCain to rally even lukewarm Republicans around the idea that neither they nor McCain are liberal. They don't have to agree on policy specifics--but they can emphatically join together around a "non-liberal" banner.
Both candidates, of course, are running on the idea of "change," which, in essence, is the idea that they are "not George W. Bush." It makes sense, since Bush's approval ratings are measured on a nanoscale these days.
"That," notes Galinsky dryly, "is much easier for Obama."
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