Topeka ? With a little more than one week before the Nov. 5 election, expect an onslaught of negative campaign ads.

On television, political candidates will launch ads that feature grainy photos of their opponents while serious-sounding narrators talk about the unspeakable acts of horror these people have committed.

On radio, concerned voices will express indignation at the alleged offenses of this or that candidate.

Candidates spend millions of dollars for these ads, believing that they are an effective way to get their message out to the greatest number of voters.

And for years, political experts have been saying that although the public decries negative ads, the ads work.

But Rohini Ahluwalia, an associate professor of business at Kansas University, is leading a charge of research that says negative ads aren’t as effective as many experts believe.

Ahluwalia, who specializes in how people process negative information in corporate branding and politics, has studied a database of 2,000 voters nationwide and analyzed their responses to numerous political questions.

She has concluded that negative ads aren’t persuading undecided voters, rather they are solidifying the feelings of voters who have already made up their minds.

“It’s like preaching to the choir. It’s only when you’ve decided that you don’t like somebody that you become much more attuned to negative information about them,” she said.

Mark Peterson, a political science professor at Topeka’s Washburn University, also questioned the conventional wisdom that says negative ads are effective.

He said the negative attack ad is sometimes seen as an act of desperation by a candidate.

“The general rule of thumb is, people who are behind go negative,” Peterson said.

He said in the Kansas governor’s race, Republican Tim Shallenburger started to run negative ads against Democrat Kathleen Sebelius because he trailed in the polls and had to “remove the patina of St. Kathleen.”

Peterson said that so far, Sebelius has been good at rebutting his attacks.

Both Peterson and Ahluwalia said voters should be careful in accepting as truth what they hear and see in negative political ads.

“The voters have to take the ads with a grain of salt and think about the real issues at hand and not get distracted by the noise created by some of the ads,” Ahluwalia said.