Aim for the Heart? A Study of New Zealand Voters' Responses to Emotional Appeals in Televised Political Advertising

Abstract

Political advertising plays a fundamental role in enabling political parties to communicate with their constituents. This communication process is intensified during elections when parties seek to not only inform but also persuade potential voters. Advertising subsequently becomes a particularly potent campaign tool, and it is for this reason that parties employ a variety of strategies aimed at ensuring that their desired message and image is communicated. One strategy often maligned by political commentators and scholars is political parties’ use of emotionally evocative imagery and music in televised advertising. There has been much debate on the use of emotion in televised political advertising, but systematic investigation into how voters actually respond to this advertising content remains under-researched, particularly in New Zealand.

Two emotions in particular have attracted the attention of political advertising scholars: enthusiasm and fear. Research conducted predominantly in the United States suggests advertisements containing uplifting, enthusiasm inducing imagery and music work best to motivate political involvement and reinforce voters’ existing political preferences. In contrast, advertisements using fear inducing imagery and music encourage voters to engage in decision-making processes that make can make them more open to persuasion.

Drawing on these international research findings, this thesis asks: How do New Zealand voters respond to emotional appeals in televised political advertising? A sequential mixed methods design was used to address this question. The experiment conducted during the 2011 New Zealand general election offers limited conclusive evidence on the motivational, informational, and persuasive power of emotional appeals in political advertising. However, a series of focus groups conducted post-experiment suggests that enthusiasm and fear advertisements could potentially polarise voters, with the latter often resulting in an unintended backlash against the party sponsoring the advertisement. There is also evidence that New Zealand voters have little appetite for negative advertising in general and are highly critical of advertisements that fail to articulate policy detail. Overall, the findings suggest that enthusiasm and fear appeals increase the potency of an advertisement’s message, but that these appeals are not guaranteed to elicit the intended response from voters.