How Prevalent Is the Negativity Effect in Consumer Environments?

The negativity effect, or the greater weighing of negative as compared with equaily extreme positive information in the formation of overaii evaiuations, is wideiy beiieved by media pianners and appears to be a weil-proven phenomenon in consumer psychoiogy, Aithough this effect has been extensiveiy documented under conditions of moderate to high processing invoivement in the iiterature, its robustness in consumer environments may be overstated, Specificaliy, there are important differences between the experimentai settings in which this effect has typically been obtained and marketplace conditions. For instance, subjects in past studies have typicaily evaiuated unknown or hypothetical targets with the goai of forming an accurate impression. In the marketplace, consumers may be familiar with brands and likeiy to process brand-related information with a variety of other processing goals, such as impression and defense motivation. Using two experiments, this re-inquiry delineates conditions under which the negativity effect is iikely to emerge and those under which it may be iess iikeiy to occur.