Whether voter sees message as issue or image material depends on predisposition This study argues that, like meaning, political issue and image information does not rest solely in the content of a political advertisement, but rests also in the minds of the perceivers. Although the mass media literature addresses the effects of cognitive variables on the processing of political information,1 this study explores the existence of a cognitive bias which affects an individual's processing of political advertisements. Research suggests that the selective recall of either image or issue political information may result from the motivation to attend to image or issue information,2 from the existence of a schema which facilitates the processing of image or issue information,3 or the elaboration of one's political belief system.4 But do these motivations, schemata and beliefs result in a predisposition to process predominantly image or issue information, regardless of the image and issue content of the information? This question is particularly relevant to political advertising research for two reasons: 1) political advertisers have long been criticized for focusing on candidates' images to the neglect of issue information,5 and 2) content analytic studies6 and studies of individual processing differences7 have not yet merged. Moreover, if processing biases exist, what are the demographic and political characteristics associated with image or issue information orientations? For example, Swanson and Freeman report that discriminating among political candidates on the basis of political criteria (e.g. issues, ideologies, and political background was not related to reported interest in politics, or the frequency with which people discuss politics with friends.8 However, it was related to political activities such as donating money to campaigns and working for campaigns. If we assume that political motivations, schemata and beliefs mediate the processing of political advertisements, two important research questions are raised. RQ 1: Do image and issue political information processing orientations exist? RQ 2: If image and issue processing biases exist, what political and demographic variables are related to this processing bias. Method The sample was composed of 113 members of men's and women's organizations (59% males, and 41% females). The groups were exposed to two televised political advertisements for opposing United States Senate candidates in another state. The ads were selected because of their relatively equal and similar image and issue information representation, the discussion of issues pertinent to the area, the unfamiliarity of the candidates to the subjects and the lack of partisan labels in the ads. Senatorial ads were employed because past research has shown that senatorial level campaigns initiate moderate to high political involvement among the general public.9 To further stimulate involvement in this artificial situation, subjects were led to believe that the candidates were seeking party nomination in their state for the next senatorial campaign. The ads were not systematically content analyzed for image and issue content. However, 25 pre-test subjects evaluated the ads for comparable ease in evaluating both candidates on all image and issue criteria. The specific differences between the ads is not central to the proposed hypothesis, however. The hypothesis argues that voters will respond consistently with an image or issue orientation regardless of the content of the ad. As a representation of initial information processing, cognitive responses seem a valid measure for identifying image and issue processing biases.10 The general paradigm for assessing cognitive responses in research involves oral or written listing of the subject's thoughts immediately following exposure to the message. Each of these responses were content analyzed as being image, issue or other. …