ABSTRACT
In order for political predispositions to become activated into overt political behavior, two fundamental preconditions must be met. First, an arousing stimulus must get through the perceptual screen of the predisposed individual and, secondly, that stimulus must facilitate, rather than inhibit, behavior. The politically alienated American is very likely to feel at least some political threat, some residual psycho-political disturbance that makes his alienation a potentially unstable state; a state that can be activated and changed by communications stimuli, as in the case of successful appeals by radical or revolutionary groups. The alienated man's information problems can be solved by a search for information from and about radical and revolutionary sources. Measurements of several independent variables, alienation from the American political system, negative evaluation of that alienation and negative evaluation of newspapers were then taken on a pre-experimental questionnaire. Political alienation appears to predispose individuals to be more interested, rather than less interested, in communications.
