Theory of Planned Behaviour

Implicit attitudes
unknown origin
activated automatically
influence implicit responses
Not seen as part of attitude, and so not controlled/moderated #

Attitude

Attitude as a term in visual art to describe postures and outward appearence
Darwin expression of emotions in man and animals - patterns of motor activity express emotions

General feeling of favour (or disfavour) towards an object person or concept (Ajzen & Fishbein)

Attitude-behaviour

Wicker (1969) attitude unrelated or only slightly related to behaviour

Ajzen & Fishbein this is a measurement problem
ANY behaviour can be predicted from attitude

LaPiere Chinese couple experiment

Criticisms
strong norms of politness vs questionaire answer
who responded?
typicality effect - stereotype vs. real person

Davidoson jacard 1976
Birth control questionaire
followed up 2 years later
have you used birth control pills
low correspondence birth control
greater to pills
greatest to using.

Theory of reasoned action

Attitude to behaviour
subjective norm
these give behavioural intention
this predicts behaviour action

Subjective norm is a social influence variable.
normative beliefs - other people and wish to comply

Attitude
behavioural beliefs - doing this will lead to outcomes

Seen as largely automatic or implicit only in rare cases do we become aware (Ajzen & F)

Subjective expected utility theory

Description rather than how to change or design intervetion

Perceptions of social pressures to perform (or not) a certain action

TPB

TRA only deals with volition
doesn't deal with restricted behaviour
PERCIEVED BEHAVIOURAL CONTROL added

.71 (Ajzen) or .63 (Connor) betweenTPB elements and intention

Implicit attitudes
unknown origin
activated automatically
influence implicit responses
Not seen as part of attitude, and so not controlled/moderated #

Criticisms

Developments

Affect

Overly cognitive/rational (questionnaire is inherrently cognitive)
anticipated regret
Impulsivity better predicts

Ajzen
theory does not anticipate sexual urges, addictions, strong emotions
However implicit attitudes cover affect

Intention/behaviour gap

Correspondence/compatibility (see measurement accuracy)
Intention stability - change over time between sample and action
lack of control (acknowledge within model)

Attitude strength

some flexible others not
Important ideas for stron attitudes are:
Durability over time
influential impact of behaviour
resistance to persuasion

Positive attitude (high positive, low negative)
Negative (low positive, high negative)
Ambivalent (high positive, high negative)
Indifferent (low positive, low negative)

Ambivalence
strong positive and negative attitudes/feelings at the same time
Wanting cake, but wanting to not want cake (elster 1989)
concerned about the present rather than the future. Impulsivity when immediate, less in the future. e.g. booking a meal in advance (herrnstein)

Indifference
survey methodology
People don't have an attitude but mark scale anyway

Survey methodology

Gym membership
ambivalent attitude predicts weaker intention-behaviour relationship

Additional variables
Ajzen - invite to add other things
but no redundancy and parsimony

Moral norms
Descriptive norms
self-identity
anticipated affect/regret

Behavoiur specific
causal factor
conceptually independent
applicable to wide range of behaviours (not only work sometimes)

Moral - not wide range
Descriptive norm - Accepted
self-identitiy - not behaviour specific, not conceptually independent
Anticipated regret- problem of correspondence/compatibility

Percieved norm replaced with SUBJECTIVE NORM
INJUNCTIVE - what others think you should do
DESCRIPTIVE - how others behave