object does not predict or explain an individual's overt behavior regarding that person or object". This revelation of low correlation did not necessarily render findings useless but instead led to further research on how under certain circumstances it was possible to change a person's behavior via their attitudes. While Hovland focused on an individual rather than a group level, he began to take into consideration interpersonal communication in the form of persuasion. Specifically, Hovland was responsible for carrying out a series of studies that contributed to the "cumulative understanding of persuasion behavior that has never since been matched or even rivaled". To test and apply his theorization Hovland worked proposed the SMCR model. The SMCR model consists of four components—source variables, message variables, channel variables, and receiver variables. By manipulating each of these variables, Hovland was able to advance his "message-learning approach to attitude change". There were problems with his particular approach, however, in that by focusing on a single dimension of the SMCR model, Hovland was unable to do more than isolate a factor rather than study the synergy between the different variables. Death Hovland died in on April 16, 1961. When Hovland learned that he had cancer, he continued to work with his Yale doctoral students and conduct persuasion experiments. Finally, when he could work no more, he left his office in the Psychology Department, went to his home in New Haven, drew a bathtub full of water, and drowned himself. Notes 1912 births 1961 suicides 20th-century American psychologists Social psychologists Suicides by drowning in the United States Yale Sterling Professors Suicides in Connecticut 1961 deaths United States Army personnel of World War II Members of the American Philosophical Society