Linda F. Alwitt
DePaul University

John Deighton
University of Chicago

John Grimm
Multi Quest Inc., Metairie, LA.

The general hypothesis in this research is that to predict how a voter will
process and respond to a persuasive message it is necessary to account
for the moderating effect of an attitudinal bond or relationship between
a voter and a candidate. We argue that the bond between a person and
an attitude object may be multidimensional, rooted in one or more of
several independent psychological processes. Recent work on attitude
strength ( Abelson, 1988; Raden, 1985) has conceived of the construct as
multidimensional. If that is so, then it is possible that each component of
a person-object attitudinal bond may moderate differentially the pro-
cessing of messages that relate to an underlying attitude.

We use the dimensions of subjective verifiability, objective verifi-
ability and performance to form a typology of bonds, each of which, we
argue, plays a different mediating role in the processing of political
advertising messages. These three dimensions can be thought of as
parallel to affect, cognition, and behavior in the tripartite theory of
attitude ( McGuire, 1985).

We examine three bases on which an attitudinal bond between a person
and an object might be strongly held: a basis in objective verifiability, a

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