Thinkscan.com Announces Results of CNN Sponsored Study to Measure Effectiveness of Political Attack Ads

Business Wire,  June 24, 2008  

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NEW YORK -- Thinkscan.com[TM] today announced the results of a study on political attack ads it recently conducted for CNN. The study provides concrete evidence that such attack ads have a significant and measurable impact on voter opinion outside of their awareness.

When voters are asked what they think of attack ads and whether or not these ads affect them, they universally condemn this form of advertising and believe they are not affected by them. And yet candidates continue to spend millions of dollars on political attack ads. The Thinkscan.com[TM] CNN study explored the reason for this discrepancy.

According to Thinkscan.com[TM] President, Dr. Joel Weinberger, the answer lies in cutting edge psychological science and neuroscience, which shows that people respond to messages on both conscious and unconscious levels. And the two sets of responses are often quite different--sometimes diametrically opposed. Weinberger states that "people consciously abhor attack ads and do not believe they affect them, but unconsciously these attack ads may trigger a set of associations in the brain that leave a lasting impression, even though the viewer may be unaware of it."

For the CNN sponsored test, Thinkscan.com[TM] ran a study using recent attack ads from the 2008 presidential race - two from Hillary Clinton's campaign, designed to raise concerns about Barack Obama and one ad from an independent group attacking John McCain's stance on Iraq. To measure what reactions the ads triggered unconsciously, the study employed Thinkscan's uniquely sensitive Color Test, which asks respondents to click on the color a word is printed in while deliberately ignoring the content of the word. Research has shown that ignoring the meaning of the word is harder to do when it is already on the person's mind outside of awareness. Ideas that are active, slow the person down by thousands of a second. Thinkscan's proprietary technology measures those milliseconds and detects which thoughts or emotions are active unconsciously.

The Thinkscan study used negative words that represented what each attack ad was trying to accomplish, along with positive words that could be associated with the politician being attacked.

The results were clear: The attack ads worked, even though voters reported disliking them and being unaffected by them. According to Weinberger, "the negative message regarding Obama had indeed gotten through. People unconsciously perceived that Obama was Weak, Muslim, and Incompetent. For the anti-McCain ad, McCain was associated with Bush and Poor Judgment."

The bottom line from Thinkscan.com[TM]: Political attack ads work by affecting unconscious associations, regardless of what people consciously report.

About Thinkscan.com:

Thinkscan.com[TM] LLC, a NY based company, develops and conducts tests for the research and marketing industry. Their patent-pending technologies will tell you the impact of a product, candidate, brand, logo, or ad campaign.

Traditional surveys, polls, and focus groups provide only part of the picture. They miss unconscious responses, because people can't consciously report their unconscious reactions.

Thinkscan.com knows most persuasion occurs outside of awareness, through changes in networks of thoughts, ideas, emotions and images that create lasting impressions and strong gut reactions. Thinkscan.com measures those networks and emotions cost effectively and reliably. Thinkscan.com[TM] can assess hundreds, even thousands of people simultaneously.

Learn more at the Thinkscan.com blog.

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