ABSTRACT
Opinions that are founded largely on social adjustment should be more readily influenced by what others think than by information about their object. Political as well as advertising campaigns employ the strategies of "prestige suggestion" on the assumption, often apparently justified, that the dynamics of the opinions they would alter are of this kind. A man's opinions, too, carry his signature. So a comprehensive account of the relations between personality and opinions must go beyond the functional question to examine the expressive aspect of opinions, the ways in which an individual's opinions are shaped by the kind of person who has them. Both a person's intellectual and his temperamental qualities are revealed in the nature of his attitudes. Expressed opinions are, after all, a form of behavior, and opinions held are but one type of behavioral disposition. Discrepancies between attitudes and behavior pose a logical or moral problem, hardly a psychological one.
