Positive and Negative Ads

Overview

Objectives/Goals I hypothesize that if volunteers watch two different campaign speeches, one including positive ads, the other including negative ads, then the voters will elect the candidate who gave positive advertisements about themselves. Methods/Materials Video Camera, Headphones, Professional Setting to film the speeches, Volunteers to act as voters, Volunteer to act as candidate, Voting Slips, Pencils, Folder. 1. Create voting slips similar to the following: Name and Age: Gender: M / F Please circle the candidate that you would vote for in a real election. Candidate A / Candidate B 2. Select a volunteer to act as Candidate A and Candidate B who will be running against each other in an election. (The same volunteer to act as both candidates will eliminate age, gender, and appearance bias.) 3. In the first campaign speech, Candidate A will only use positive ads about him or herself. 4. Afterwards in the next campaign speech, Candidate B will use only negative ads against Candidate A. 5. During the campaign, video tape each candidate discussing their or the opponent#s qualities while using the same formula for negative and positive ads. 6. Play the video for volunteers/ voters and instruct them to vote for the preferred candidate. 7. Once all of the volunteers has voted, analyze the results to find out which candidate was most influential in an election. Results My data table and graph show that Candidate A was obviously the winner in my experiment. Thirty one people voted for Candidate A while only eleven people ended up voting for Candidate B. Not only does my graph show which candidate won the election, but my data table also shows the volunteer information such as the voters age, gender, and which candidate that they voted for. Conclusions/Discussion My hypothesis was correct. Given my research on positive and negative campaigning, I hypothesize that if my volunteers watch two different campaign speeches, one including positive ads, the other including negative ads, then the voters will elect the candidate who gave positive advertisements about themselves.

Competition history

• CSEF 2014 Behavioral & Social Sciences · Entry J0414

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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