Abstract

The Journal of Social Psychology, 1969, 78, 63-74. THE SOURCE OF BELIEFS, THEIR SALIENCY, AND PREDICTION OF ATTITUDE* Departments of Psychology, Wayne State Univerdy and University of Illinois KALMAN J. KAPLAN AND MARTIN FISHBEIN A. INTRODUCTION In a recent series of papers, Fishbein (2, 3, 5) has presented a behavior theory approach to the study of attitudes. In it, he has conceptualized at- titude as a learned, mediating, evaluative response; and he has viewed an individual’s beliefs about any given object in terms of the probability (or strength) of stimulus-response associations. Further, he has viewed a belief system (i.e., the totality of an individual’s beliefs about any given object) as a habit-family-hierarchy of responses. Generally speaking, his position may be summarized as follows : (a) an individual holds many beliefs about any given object: i.e., many different characteristics, attributes, values, goals, etc. are positively or nega- tively associated with a given object; (b) associated with each of these “re- lated objects” is a mediating evaluative response: i.e., an attitude; (c) these evaluative responses summate ; (d) through the processes of conditioning and mediation, this summated evaluative response becomes associated with the at- titude object; and thus (e) on future