Every presidential campaign includes ads with strategies to
try and persuade us, the people, to vote for the “right” person. After watching
this ad Obama promotes registering to vote, you may look past it thinking well
its just another ad where one candidate attacks the other, but it’s more than
that. There are many techniques that are used to subliminally have your mind
think about what is really being said. These techniques are not only
persuasive, but they have proven time and time again to be affective in
political advertisements.
This voting ad supporting Obama uses several techniques. The
first is conformity, which basically means that everybody wants to belong to
one group. In the article by Bruce F. Roberson, he states,
“The higher the energization, the greater
should be the subjective desirability of a positive outcome and the subjective
aversiveness of a negative outcome. Energization itself is thought to be
determined — at least in part —by task engagement (i.e., effort), which in turn
is believed to be a function of the difficulty of instrumental behavior" (Pg.
374) (Roberson & Wright, 1994).
In the ad,
Obama makes it clear that it is not that hard to go and register. This means
the difficulty is easy which will lead to a more positive outcome just like the
article says.
Another strategy used is fear + direction = action.
This means that there is some sort of reliable evidence that shows effective
warnings and instructions presented by a credible source (Aronson, 91). In this ad, it informs the person watching
that voting is important. It brings fear by saying if you do not vote then
Romney will ban gay marriage, he opposed ending the don’t ask don’t tell law, and
will end funding for planned parenthood. So by not voting, you are at risk of
losing all of what is mentioned in the ad. This fear should make people want to
go vote against Romney in order to keep these rights.
Finally, the last and most important strategy used
was vivid example. This is when you can use images that will stick in a person’s
head, in order to get the message across. For example, in this ad the words say
that “Romney would ban gay marriage” and there is a male couple holding hands
in the background. This image will stick in the voter’s head and will lead them
to remember that Romney will get rid of this right if he is voted into power.
This should help skew the votes towards Obama and away from Romney. In the
article, by Ji-Woong Kim, she summarizes,
“Our findings indicate an important role of the amygdala
in the processing of unpleasant emotion or self-relevance of information in the
real world may also be expanded to the processing of self-directedness of
unpleasant emotion in the imagined world, and thereby contribute to human
higher social cognitive process.
This study also suggests that deactivation of ACC may enable us to enact vivid affective responses, and thereby
contribute to an effective simulation of social interaction (Kim, 2008).”
This shows that it is a cognitive effect and
that the images becomes implanted in our brain so therefore it will be easier
to remember who’s better to vote for when the time comes.
As you can see, political advertisements use
strategies to target as many people as possible and persuade them. Even the
smallest advertisement can sway a person’s thought process and what they
previously chose to believe in. It may seem like they have all the power, but
at the end of the day we are the deciding factor and we must make the proper
choices by not listening to everything we hear in every ad.
You stay classy San Diego,
Andre Gonzalez
References
Aronson, E. (2011). The social animal. (eleventh
ed.). New York: Worth Publishers.
Roberson, B. F., & Wright, R. A. (1994). Difficulty
as a Determinant of Interpersonal Appeal: A Social-Motivational Application of
Energization Theory. Basic & Applied Social Psychology, 15(3), 373-388.
Kim, J. (2008). The role of amygdala during auditory verbal imagery of derogatory appraisals by others. (Master's thesis), Available from
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