Negative Political Advertising & its Overall Effects (now and later)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ1p3tLKE-A&feature=player_embedded

This YouTube clip is a prime example of a negative political advertisement. In this particular clip Darcy Burner attacks congressman Dave Riechert. Burner makes several attacks towards his character and doubts his ability to "get things done", ultimately stating that rather than being "independent" he is "ineffective." Interestingly enough, Burner does not state what she is going to do in congress in order to be "effective", her voice is just heard at the end of the advertisement saying that she approves this message.
In class we learned that negative political character based advertisements such as these promote political cynicism as well as a decrease self-efficacy from the general public especially after multiple exposures. However, negative advertisements such as these create another response that benefits the attacker showcased in the ad. A study done by Digital Democracy, revealed that the majority of people who saw such negative based ads voted for the attacker. Proving that negative ads do generate the type of response that a vote hungry politician needs. In addition to these findings, it was also discovered that people who saw these negative ads overtime may have forgotten where/when they had heard something negative about the politician being attacked in the ad, but the negative content was still stuck in their minds. Such findings show that not only does negative information stick, but it sticks longer than the positive information.
So where do we go from here? If negative ads in the long-run promote cynicism and decrease self-efficacy from the public which may decrease overall voting, but currently are giving politicians their desired response, a vote in their favor, how do we as a society make a change in this dangerous pattern? There really isn't much we can do except try to avoid and/ or protest negative political advertising by not voting for that particular candidate who uses negative advertising as their prime component of their campaign. However, as a society can we do that or do we secretly like hearing the negative aspects of another politician?

-Maria Matlack