With sadness, I am forwarding the news of Martin Fishbein’s death.

Curt Haugtvedt
Ohio State University

From Icek Aizen:

We report with great sadness that our friend and colleague, Martin Fishbein, died Friday, November 27 of a heart attack while on a visit to London. Marty was a professor at the University of Illinois — Champaign/Urbana from 1961 to 1997 and since then has been the Harry C. Coles, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication and founding director of the Health Communication division of the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

Marty’s research interests included attitude theory and measurement, communication and persuasion, behavioral prediction and change, and behaviors in field and laboratory settings, including studies of the effectiveness of health-related behavior change interventions. He was president of both the Society for Consumer Psychology and the Interamerican Psychological Society and won many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Marty is perhaps best known for his landmark theories in the field of social psychology. Working with his former student Icek Ajzen, he expanded his expectancy-value model into the theory of reasoned action, a theory that has had a marked impact not only on attitude research but also on applied work in such fields as health psychology, environmental behavior, marketing, organizational communication, and consumer behavior. His work is reviewed in a just published monograph: Fishbein, M., & Ajzen, I. (2010). Predicting and changing behavior: The reasoned action approach. New York: Psychology Press (Taylor & Francis).

Information about a celebration of his life will follow when plans for the event are finalized.

Icek Aizen
University of Massachusetts

[The Annenberg School at Penn has put an obituary online – ch]