A serious problem in the area of attitude research is the low relationship between verbal attitude and supposedly related overt behavior. A study tested a model derived from M. Deutsch's proposition on persuasive communication stating that for communication to be effective in a conflict situation, it must convey to the information receiver the basic elements of specificity of the source's recommendations, costs that would result from compliance with the recommendations, values and benefits that would accrue to the receiver for complying with the recommendations, harmful consequences that would result from noncompliance, and expressions of the source's power to induce compliance. An attitude questionnaire was administered to 353 undergraduate students to measure their attitudes toward a "petition" directed toward the United States Congress to speed up passage of bipartisan legislation to establish a national health insurance program. Results provided strong support for the hypothesis that information relevance, source credibility, and decisional consequence would collectively and individually influence attitude change. The measurement of consequence as the quotient of the value/cost measures had a similar effect on the motivational component of attitude. Together the results support the assumption that cognition provides the basis for the affect that the individual expresses, and that motivation represents the dispositional (readiness-to-act) character of the individual's attitude. (HOD)