ABSTRACT
MUCH of the literature devoted to studies of the cognitiveprocesses involved in making political decisions has tended tosupport the notion that voters are somewhat less than rational. Even those studies that investigated the role played by issue or "proximity" voting in electoral behavior have tended to support that conclusion. To the extent that voters perceive there to be congruity with a candidate's positions on issues, that congruity is generally attributed to perceptual distortion. However, none of these studies has included variables related to mass media use or attention to political information. We hope to fill that gap by investigating the relationship between the use of mass media for political information and the type of cognitive processes employed in making political decisions.
