Negativity Effects in Impression Formation: A Test in the Political Arena

Negative information has a stronger influence on impressions of others than positive information, a tendency known as the negativity effect. The hypothesis that this effect would characterize impressions of presidential candidates was tested using National Election Study surveys from 1984 and 1988. Respondents rated the presidential candidates on a number of personality traits. Aggregate-level analyses revealed that personality characteristics that the nation, on average, judged to represent character weaknesses were more predictive of overall evaluations and voting than characteristics judged to represent strengths. At the idiographic level, it was found that a trait was significantly more predictive when it fell below an individual's average trait rating for a candidate than when it was located above this mean. Thus, character weaknesses were more important than strengths in determining the public's evaluations of the candidate and the ultimate vote.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69102/2/10.1177_0146167291174009.pd