Final answer:
Negative ads attack an opponent's character and are often more memorable but may increase political cynicism, whereas positive ads promote the candidate's own virtues and agenda. Scholars suggest that negative ad effectiveness may decrease over time as voters become weary of attack tactics.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement that most accurately characterizes positive and negative political advertising is that negative ads attack opponents' character, while positive ads would highlight a candidate's own virtues, achievements, or political agenda.
In practice, negative advertising tends to focus on criticizing or attacking an opponent, often questioning their integrity, highlighting their past mistakes or policy failures, and using emotional appeals to paint the opponent in a negative light. Such tactics have been shown to be memorable to voters and can sometimes be more impactful than positive messages, though they may also increase cynicism towards politics.
On the other hand, positive advertising aims to promote the candidate's image, sharing their vision, accomplishments, and policy proposals. Positive ads build up the candidate instead of bringing down the opposition. However, even though negative ads currently dominate the landscape due to their perceived immediate impact, there is a sentiment among political scholars that their effectiveness may wane in the future, as voters grow weary of attack politics and as new platforms like social media change the dynamics of campaign messaging.