Review

Author(s): Rodney B. Douglass

Review by: Rodney B. Douglass
Source: Philosophy & Rhetoric, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Spring, 1977), pp. 130-132
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40237022
Accessed: 01-10-2015 09:09 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Penn State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Philosophy & Rhetoric.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Thu, 01 Oct 2015 09:09:54 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
130 BOOK REVIEWS

pression. It is only at thè end of thè period he studies that thè

author finds treated the intrinsic worth of relations generated by
privately responsible persons.
It is unfair to ask an author for a hook he did not intend to write.
It is nonetheless true that each reader not primarily concerned with
literary history for itself must create his or her own profit from this
book by paralleling Beye's literary history with the history of other
aspects of Greek linguistic expérience. Rhetorical and philosophical
scholars should try this. Then Beye will furnish them an interesting,
reasoned, unpedantic tale of poetic and dramatic developments
among which rhetoric and philosophy grew.

CARROLL C. ARNOLD
Department of Speech Communication
The Pennsylvania State University

Belief, Attitude, Intention, and Behavior:An Introductionto Theory

and Research. MARTIN FISHBEIN and ICEK AJZEN. Reading,
Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company. 1975. Pp. xi
+ 578. $13.95

For nearly half a Centuryattitude has remained a central concept,

if not the most distinctive, in social-psychological inquiry. Indeed,
the concept seems virtually indispensible to contemporary social-
psychological theory and research. Yet, one must be taken with the
level of disagreement, apparent inconsistency and contradiction,
and seeming inconclusiveness in the vaste literature on attitude and
attitude-related topics. Accordingly, many question whether the
concept holds more problem than promise. Speaking to this issue,
Fishbein and Ajzen hâve attempted to "présent a cohérent and
systematic framework that can be applied to the diverse literature
on attitudes" and thereby demonstrate that "the attitude literature
is neither as inconsistent nor as inconclusive as it first appears"
(Preface). The resuit of their efforts should stand as a welcomed ad-
dition to the literature by most serious students of social psy-
chology.

This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Thu, 01 Oct 2015 09:09:54 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 BOOK REVIEWS 131

Fishbein and Ajzen's perspective on attitude is hardly novel and

should trouble very few. For them, an attitude may be seen simply
but specifically as "a learned prédisposition to respond in a con-
sistently favorable or unfavorable manner with respect to a given
object" (p. 6). Their conceptual framework is, however, at once
timely, provocative, and potentially useful. It is their position that
our understanding of attitude should be worked out in conceptual
distinctions among belief, attitude, behavioral intention, and
behavior itself, and through assumption of spécifie causal linkages
and séquences among the four. In brief, they regard an attitude
toward an object as following upon beliefs about the object and, in
turn, yielding intentions and ultimately behavior with respect to
same. While attitude remains their central focus, belief serves as the
most basic construet in their approach to relevant issues, findings,
and topics.
The volume is organized in terms admirably consistent with this
conceptual orientation and with the authors' conviction that at-
titude theory and research is addressed to three essential questions:
(1) What are the déterminants of beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and
behavior? (2) How are thèse variables related to one another? (3)
What are the ways in which thèse variables can be influenced and
thus changed? This scheme is sufficiently familiär to make the
specialized reader feel suitably comfortable with the authors9
treatment of the literature. Yet, it is also straight-forward enough to
make "good sensé" to the nonspecialist.
Specifically, Part I of the volume deals with a wide variety of at-
titude and attitude-related théories, measurement techniques, and
methodological concerns. Certainly, the authors may be faulted for
what is (perhaps strategically) excluded from serious considération.
For this reviewer, the most notable exclusion is the social judgment-
involvement approach to attitude theory and research; the many
and well-known insights from the works of Shérif and Shérif and
others bearing on this approach receive only token considération in
the présent volume. Nonetheless, Fishbein and Ajzen must be
applauded for the rather broad range of theoretical and empirical
literature included in the section, for their integration of the great
bulk of that literature into a single, cohérent framework, and for
their treatment of same in generally clear and cogent prose.

This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Thu, 01 Oct 2015 09:09:54 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
132 BOOK REVIEWS

Much the same interprétation holds for Part II of the volume,

dealing with the central issues relating to the formation of beliefs,
attitudes, and intentions, and to the prédiction of behavior. Indeed,
this section may well be the best of the lot. In my view, it includes
some of the most insightful and useful chapters in the book. Among
them is an excellent integration of theoretical perspectives and
research findings on inferential belief formation and attribution
processes (Chapter 5), a cogent exposition of the interrelationships
between beliefs and attitudes (Chapter 6), and a generally
provocative discussion (in terms not entirely traditional or typical)
of thè nature of intention and the prédiction of behavior (Chapters
7 and 8).
Part III of the volume deals with the influence process and the
crucial question of change. While this final section lacks the
strength and appeal characterizing the balance of the work, it is
nevertheless interesting and worthy of attention. The section's first
chapter (Chapter 9) is perhaps its best. It focuses on principles of
change understood within the authors' conceptual framework and
thus providing both a logicai conclusion to the thinking developed
throughout earlier chapters and an introduction to the authors'
considération of stratégies of change. In Fishbein and Ajzen's view,
most changes in attitude, intention, and ultimately behavior are, in
the final analysis, initiated by changes in belief. Arid, for them,
changes in belief are, for the most part, conséquents to exposure to
"new information." The remainder of the section extends this view
through a discussion of stratégies of change under the headings "ac-
tive participation" (Chapter 10) and "persuasive communication"
(Chapter 11), and a concluding chapter. While the authors'
theoretical posture in this section is, in my opinion, neither im-
pressive nor insightful, their attempts at reconciling conflicting
findings and at generating a sensible explanation of the influence
process are both admirable and entirely respectable.

RODNEY B. DOUGLASS
Department of Speech Communication
California State University at Fresno

This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Thu, 01 Oct 2015 09:09:54 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions