Are Political Attacks a Laughing Matter? Three Experiments on Political Humor and the Effectiveness of Negative Campaigning

• Author: Iris Verhulsdonk,Alessandro Nai,Jeffrey A. Karp
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211023590
• Published date: 01 September 2022
• Date: 01 September 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211023590

Political Research Quarterly

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Introduction

Negative information is likely to matter for political judg-

ments about competing parties and candidates. A great

deal of evidence supports the existence of a “negativity

bias” (Hibbing, Smith, and Alford 2014), that is, the ten-

dency to be more attuned and to respond more strongly to

negatively valenced information (Rozin and Royzman

2001). Indeed, voters have been shown to base their deci-

sions more strongly on voting against given candidates

and parties (Jasperson and Fan 2002) in line with theories

of “negative partisanship” (Medeiros and Noël 2014).

Yet, the wealth of existing studies has up until now failed

to reach a consensus regarding the electoral effectiveness

of negative campaigning (Lau, Sigelman, and Rovner

2007; Nai and Walter 2015). Does going negative help

win elections? Do candidates that “go negative” against

their opponents gain an edge over them? We do not yet

fully understand to what extent negative messages have

the power to harm the target—as intended—or, instead,

“backfire” against the attacker and reduce its support in

the eyes of the voters. This “backlash effect” (Fridkin and

Kenney 2004; Roese and Sande 1993) is especially likely

to take place if voters perceive the attack as ungrounded,

inappropriate, or too outrageous for their taste, which is

quite frequent (Fridkin and Kenney 2011).

Under which conditions are attacks more likely to be

effective? Recent research suggests that this is a function

of individual differences, so that deeply rooted personal

characteristics of those exposed to negativity determine

the extent to which they perceive, process, and accept (or

discount) the persuasive messages. For instance,

Weinschenk and Panagopoulos (2014) show that negative

messages are more likely to decrease civic participation

in individuals who score high in agreeableness; in a simi-

lar fashion, Fridkin and Kenney (2011) argue that the

effects of negative messages depend on respondents’

“tolerance towards negativity,” whereas Nai and Otto

(2020) show that individuals scoring high on schaden-

freude are more likely to adjust their assessments of can-

didates after exposure to negative (vs. positive) messages.

All in all, these studies suggest that some individuals

might be more likely to be “seduced by negativity” than

others. Yet, it is not only differences in those exposed to

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23590PRQXXX10.1177/10659129211023590Political Research QuarterlyVerhulsdonk et al.

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1Independent Researcher, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

3Brunel University London, Uxbridge, UK

Corresponding Author:

Alessandro Nai, Amsterdam School of Communication Research,

University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1001 NG, The Netherlands.

Email: A.Nai@uva.nl

Are Political Attacks a Laughing Matter?

Three Experiments on Political Humor

and the Effectiveness of Negative

Campaigning

Iris Verhulsdonk1, Alessandro Nai2, and Jeffrey A. Karp3

Abstract

Research on the effectiveness of negative campaigning offers mixed results. Negative messages can sometimes work to

depress candidate evaluations, but they can also backfire against the attacker. In this article, we examine how humor can help

mitigate the unintended effects of negative campaigning using data from three experimental studies in the United States and

the Netherlands. Our results show that (1) political attacks combined with “other-deprecatory humor” (i.e., jokes against the

opponents) are less likely to backfire against the attacker and can even increase positive evaluations of this latter—especially

when the attack is perceived as amusing. At the same time and contrary to what we expected, (2) humor does not blunt the

attack: humorous attacks are not less effective against the target than serious attacks. All in all, these results suggest that humor

can be a good strategy for political attacks: jokes reduce harmful backlash effects against the attacker, and humoros attacks

remain just as effective as humorless ones. When in doubt, be funny. All data and materials are openly available for replication.

Keywords

negative campaigning, political attacks, humor, experiment, USA, the Netherlands

2022, Vol. 75(3) 720–737

Article

Verhulsdonk et al. 721

the messages that matter, as differences in the nature of

negative messages are also likely to determine their fate.

Much attention in this sense has been devoted to the dif-

ference between issue-based and person-based attacks

(e.g., Benoit and Harthcock 1999; Lau and Pomper 2001).

Attacks against the person or character of the rivals have

been shown to be more effective than issue attacks

(Brooks and Geer 2007), but are at the same time riskier

as they are more likely to backfire against the attacker

(Carraro, Gawronski, and Castelli 2010). Indeed, per-

sonal attacks are particularly disliked by the public, and

are more likely to depress participation and turnout than

policy attacks (Min 2004).

We focus on one characteristic of (negative) campaign

messages that has received little attention so far: the use of

political humor (Baumgartner and Morris 2012; Meyer

2000). Most of the research of humor in politics deals with

satire (Boukes et al. 2015; Compton 2012), spearheaded by

the popularity of shows such as Last Week Tonight, The

Daily Show, and Saturday Night Live (Becker 2012; Duffy

and Page 2013; Hoffman and Young 2011). In this sense,

most studies on political humor deal with humor about poli-

tics, while much less attention has been devoted to humor

within the political game itself—that is, the use of humor by

competing candidates while addressing each other, for

instance, in the context of an election campaign. Yet, politi-

cians themselves often make use of political humor and

know the value of it within the political discourse. Indeed,

it is a truism that humor is an effective tool for politicians to

either make themselves more accessible to the public or their

opponents less attractive, especially on television. In other

words, candidates are not simply the unwilling foils of the

mass media’s humor, but also may define themselves and

their opponents through the use of humor on the campaign

trail. (Stewart 2011, 202)

From the standpoint of competing candidates, “humor

can be used to define political concepts, to disarm critics,

to establish détente, to establish a position or make a point”

(Nilsen 1990, 35). Humor can also be used to express

opposition, signal political identification, and promote

civic support for a cause (Davis, Love, and Killen 2018)

and can be effective to change the topic of a debate, lighten

up the mood, or relieve anxiety (Bippus 2007). Like stand-

up comedians, politicians can also invoke an observable

audience response (OAR) that can consist of visual and/or

audible indicators such as laughter, applause, cheering, and

whistling (Wells and Bull 2007). In the context of a politi-

cal debate, the use of humor that invokes an audience

response can serve as an expression of support and approval

for a politician (Stewart 2015).1

Even when there is no audience to signal a reaction or to

spread laughter (Provine 2001), humor pervades politics.

Observers of the 2019 U.K. general election will have no

trouble remembering Boris Johnson’s “Love Actually”

spoof ad2 that asks the British public to give the

Conservatives a majority to get Brexit done—a rather

indicative example of humor in politics. While the previ-

ous example did not take aim at the Labour Party, there are

many examples of humor being used to attack political

opponents. Earlier that same year, leading up to the

European Union (EU) Parliamentary elections, Dutch

“Spitzenkandidat” Frans Timmermans was parodied in a

widely circulated spoof ad as the Eurocrat “Hans

Brusselmans.”3 In the United States, Donald Trump’s use

of nicknames for political adversaries such as “Pocahontas”

(Senator Elizabeth Warren), “Sleepy Joe” Biden, “Lyin

Ted” Cruz, and most famously “Crooked Hillary” Clinton

are examples of the use of humor to typecast political rivals

in memorable ways. An example of an amusing negative

campaign advertisement in a U.S. presidential campaign

aired in 2004. It was sponsored by President George W.

Bush and featured John Kerry windsurfing in different

directions, opening with the following question: “In which

direction would John Kerry lead?” and ends with, “John

Kerry: whichever way the wind blows.” The ad was suc-

cessful in portraying John Kerry as a flip-flopper, an image

that he could not escape from while also playing to the

notion that Kerry was an East Coast elitist.

Humor makes political messages more accessible to

an audience, because it “open[s] them to judgement that

they may otherwise be unwilling to accept” (Caufield

2008, 52), and thus good reasons exist to assess its effec-

tiveness as a persuasive campaign strategy. Yet only a

handful of studies have addressed the issue, and even

fewer have done so within the framework of competing

candidates attacking each other (for exceptions, see

Baumgartner 2013; Stewart 2011).

In this paper, we examine the role of humor in political

discourse. We focus specifically on the question of how

humor can be used in the context of negative attacks,

which as the discussion above suggests, carries some

risks. We use data from three original experiments carried

out in the Netherlands and the United States to examine

how statements that seek to undermine the integrity of a

political opponent, when combined with humor, can miti-

gate the risks associated with going negative. In this way,

humor can play an important role in political campaigns

in ways that have not been fully recognized.

Political Humor and the

Effectiveness of Negative

Campaigning

Can humor be used by politicians to reshape their competi-

tive standing in the eyes of the voters? That is, is humor a

useful way to enhance the effectiveness of political attacks?

Observing the behavior of Greek MPs, Tsakona (2009)