Adaptation is a well known principle of psychology, and yet political strategists have always ignored it. Simply put, sensory adaptation is why you don't notice your underpants: your mind has adapted to their presence. It's a way taking certain constants for granted, and focusing instead on the sensations that are actually changing. My hunch is that negative ads failed this year because there were simply too many of them. Our TV's were saturated with the same cliched allegations, tired montages, and ominous warnings, and so we just tuned it all out. The nasty ads became as noticeable as our underwear. From the NY Times:
Negative advertisements that had proved so successful in the past fell short in many districts.
"You could say the guy is going to raise taxes, increase spending, he hasn't done a particularly good job," said Russ Schriefer, a Republican strategist whose campaigns included that of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. of Maryland, who was defeated Tuesday. "They would just say, uh huh, we know that but this year I'm going to vote Democrat.'"
Mr. Mehlman said that was a lesson of this campaign. "Every election cycle, advertising works a little less well than it did the previous cycle," he said.
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Thanks for clearing that up. I thought it was because I'm not wearing any underpants.
And the emperor has no clothes! And BTW - Memo to Mr. Melman - You paid for advertising that caused a backlash you idiot! You paid money for ads that caused people to vote Democratic! Bwa Ha Ha!
I haven't noticed ads of any type for years;
Unless, of course, they are like a particularly heinous pair of underwear...
you don't recognise your underpants because you're not attending to it, which is not about adaptation, but about attention (another well-known principle of psychology). adaptation is when you wear too tight an underpants but after a while (this is the adapting part), you don't realise that it's too tight -- you're adapted to it. adaptation results in aftereffects, so when you change your too-tight underpants and wear a normal underpants, for a while the normal one feels a bit loose. same thing goes for colour, size, shape, orientation, and motion adaptation.
"You could say the guy is going to raise taxes, increase spending, he hasn't done a particularly good job," said Russ Schriefer
This could be adaption or it could just be the fact this the "raise taxes, increase spending" attack is so general and cliche as to be worthless in face of the actual real lack of ethics and debt-inducing overspending that the republicans have done.