The DOI matches its Crossref record; 68 of the 68 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Effects of Negative Political Campaigns: A Meta-Analytic Reassessment
Abstract
The conventional wisdom about negative political campaigning holds that it works, i.e., it has the consequences its practitioners intend. Many observers also fear that negative campaigning has unintended but detrimental effects on the political system itself. An earlier meta-analytic assessment of the relevant literature found no reliable evidence for these claims, but since then the research literature has more than doubled in size and has greatly improved in quality. We reexamine this literature and find that the major conclusions from the earlier meta-analysis still hold. All told, the research literature does not bear out the idea that negative campaigning is an effective means of winning votes, even though it tends to be more memorable and stimulate knowledge about the campaign. Nor is there any reliable evidence that negative campaigning depresses voter turnout, though it does slightly lower feelings of political efficacy, trust in government, and possibly overall public mood.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Statistical Methods for Research Workers
(1945) · American Journal of Clinical Pathology · doi:10.1093/ajcp/15.11.552b · Cited by 10,880
The file drawer problem and tolerance for null results.
Rosenthal, R. (1979) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.86.3.638 · Cited by 9,068
Methods of Meta-Analysis: Correcting Error and Bias in Research Findings
Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. E. (2015) · doi:10.4135/9781483398105 · Cited by 5,542
Meta-Analytic Procedures for Social Research
Rosenthal, R. (1991) · doi:10.4135/9781412984997 · Cited by 4,635
Meta-Analytic Procedures for Social Research.
Metcalfe, A., & Rosenthal, R. (1994) · The Statistician · doi:10.2307/2348600 · Cited by 4,249
Meta-analysis in social research
(1982) · Evaluation and Program Planning · doi:10.1016/0149-7189(82)90011-8 · Cited by 3,853
The Handbook of Research Synthesis.
Howel, D., Cooper, H., & Hedges, L. V. (1995) · Biometrics · doi:10.2307/2533295 · Cited by 3,642
Kenny, A. (2018) · Carl Strehlow’s 1909 Comparative Heritage Dictionary: An Aranda, German, Loritja and Dieri to English Dictionary with Introductory Essays · doi:10.22459/cschd.08.2018.04 · Cited by 3,216
Striking a Responsive Chord: How Political Ads Motivate and Persuade Voters by Appealing to Emotions
Brader, T. (2005) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/j.0092-5853.2005.00130.x · Cited by 972
Going negative : how political advertisements shrink and polarize the electorate
Ansolabehere, S. D., & Iyengar, S. (1997) · Cited by 826
Cited by
The embarrassment of riches? A meta-analysis of individual-level research on voter turnout
Smets, K., & van Ham, C. (2013) · Electoral Studies · doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2012.12.006 · Cited by 799
Political Trust in a Cynical Age
Citrin, J., & Stoker, L. (2018) · Annual Review of Political Science · doi:10.1146/annurev-polisci-050316-092550 · Cited by 722
The Effectiveness of Advertising: A Meta-Meta-Analysis of Advertising Inputs and Outcomes
Eisend, M., & Tarrahi, F. (2016) · Journal of Advertising · doi:10.1080/00913367.2016.1185981 · Cited by 140
Lau, R. R., Andersen, D. J., Ditonto, T. M., Kleinberg, M. S., & Redlawsk, D. P. (2017) · Political Behavior · doi:10.1007/s11109-016-9354-8 · Cited by 127
Self-citationIncivility is rising among American politicians on twitter
Frimer, J. A., Aujla, H., Feinberg, M., Skitka, L. J., Aquino, K., Eichstaedt, J. C., & Willer, R. (2023) · Social Psychological and Personality Science · doi:10.1177/19485506221083811 · Cited by 110
Metadata
- Authors
- Lau, R. R., Sigelman, L., & Rovner, I. B.
- Venue
- The Journal of Politics
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 2007-11
- Volume
- 69
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1176-1209
- ISSN
- 0022-3816 (ISSN-L)
- 1468-2508
- OpenAlex
- W2119085303
- Cited by
- 656
- References
- 68
- FWCI
- 96.09
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Effects of Negative Political Campaigns: A Meta-Analytic Reassessment. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2007.00618.x
- The paper
- Lau, R. R., Sigelman, L., & Rovner, I. B. (2007). The Effects of Negative Political Campaigns: A Meta-Analytic Reassessment. The Journal of Politics. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2007.00618.x
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
