Previous persuasive perception literature has suggested that positive and negative
information have different effects on persuasion (Skowronski & Carlston, 1989). It has
been found that the overall evaluations of an unknown person or brand are affected to a
greater extend by negative information than by positive information (Homer & Batra, 1994). The issue of negative and positive information also has been studied in the
impression formation literature in psychology. The impression formation literature has
studied the negativity effect, which is based on the fact that people tend to put more
weight on negative than positive information in forming an overall evaluation of target
(Klein 1996; Skowronski & Carlston, 1989). This superior effect of negative information
over positive information has been termed the “negativity effect” (Masheswaran &
Meyers-Levy, 1990).