Neg­a­tive cam­paign­ing has been a con­stant of Amer­i­can elec­tions for as long as I can remem­ber, and is now mak­ing its way into main­stream UK pol­i­tics. Seed looks at how evo­lu­tion can explain both the appeal and recent fail­ings of neg­a­tive cam­paign­ing.

Adver­tis­ers, like neu­ro­sci­en­tists, started out with a so-called cog­ni­tive model of deci­sion mak­ing — a model dri­ven by logic, ratio­nal­ity, and the pre­cise weigh­ing of options. But this model “has been thrown out com­pletely,” says David Bon­ney, a for­mer psy­chol­ogy researcher who has con­ducted stud­ies for huge adver­tis­ing firms such as DDB on the impact of emo­tional adver­tis­ing. “Emo­tion, we’ve real­ized in the last decade, dri­ves all deci­sion making.”

The human brain, faced with a daily onslaught of infor­ma­tion, uses emo­tion to tag cer­tain events as worth remem­ber­ing and using for decision-making. A park­ing space is for­got­ten; a death is remem­bered. Neg­a­tive words and actions prob­a­bly have a greater impact because they elicit stronger emotions.