Book Reviews : Opinions and Personality, by M. B. Smith, J. S. Bruner and R. H. White. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., I955. 294 pp. $6.00
Abstract
Book Reviews Opinions and Personality, by M. B. Smith, J. S. Bruner and R. H. White. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., I955. 294 pp. $6.00 SAGE Publications, Inc.1956DOI: 10.1177/001316445601600420 Albert H. Hastorf Dartmouth College This book must be considered a further progress report from the Harvard Psychological Clinic-another link in the extensive chain of reports concerning the close scrutiny of the normal, adult personality by the case study method. The preface declares the primary goal of the authors as: "our concern, in a word, is with the natural history of holding opinions and our aspiration is to construct an adequate framework for this task." It begins with a brief discussion of the ways psychologists have approached the problem of studying opinions and attitudes. The body of the book is a thorough discussion of the opinions of ten men towards Soviet Russia, three of whose cases are described exhaustively. Considerable space is given to an analysis of the relationship of these opinions to other cognitive and motivational aspects of the cases. These are case studies in the classic sense of the word. There was no attempt at sampling. Some readers may see idiographic overtones, but this reviewer