This volume represents one of the first major scholarly effort to unravel the psychological and symbolic processing of political advertising. Utilizing survey, experimental, qualitative, and semiotic methodologies to study this phenomenon, the contributors to Television and Political Advertising trace how political ads help to interpret the psychological reality of the presidential campaign in the minds of millions of voters. A product of the National Political Advertising Research Project, this interdisciplinary effort is valuable to researchers in advertising, communication, and consumer psychology since it helps define future work on the relationship between television, politics, and the mind of the voter.

This volume, Television and Political Advertising: Psychological Processes, is the first of two, and covers such topics as Models and Theories for Viewing Political Television; Psychological Processing of Issues, Images, and Form; Differential Processing of Positive and Negative Advertising; and The Psychological Contexts of Processing.