In order to determine the relative effectiveness of written and vocal communications, 42 Japanese university students were presented with a tape-recorded communication representing the position of the United States at the time of the Cuban crisis. An additional 26 students from a different class read the same communication from a printed form. The attitudes of the students on this issue, defined as pro-United States or pro-Soviet, were determined one week prior to the experimental treatments and again immediately after exposure to the communications, whether written or oral. The subjects also rated the convincingness of the communication under each condition and indicated their perceptions of the communicator, using an adjective checklist. The results showed that those students who read the communication moved to a significant extent in a more pro-United States direction on the attitude scale. Those students who listened to the communication, on the other hand, showed no shift in attitude from their original position. The reading subjects also judged the communication as significantly more convincing and perceived the communicator more favorably than did the listening subjects. (Author).