theory of planned behaviour

• 3 aspects of theory of planned behaviour

  personal attitudes

  subjective norms

  perceived behavioural control
• personal attitudes

  our positive and or negative feelings towards a behaviour change
• subjective norms - what we think others think

  these are a person's belief about how those close to them view their behaviours. e.g a person is likely to drink if their friends do
• perceived behavioural control

  the belief that we can control our own actions to make us more healthy.

  it indirectly affects behaviour by affecting our intentions but also directly affects our behaviour by affecting how hard and for how long we will keep trying.
• eval

  + the tpb can predict the likelihood of behaviour change for different health related behaviours e.g smoking and alcohol consumption
• eval

  --some claim there are other factors which might affect behaviour change which are not mentioned e.g anticipated regret.
• eval

  --the tpb doesnt attempt to explain the relationship between behavioural intent and behaviour
• COOKE et al

  found that drinking intention was categorised as either 'drinking to get drunk', heavy episodic drinking, light episodic drinking or not drinking at all

  -found that positive attitudes towards drinking had a strong relationship with actually drinking

  -a weak perception of control was often associated with more drinking
• COOKE et al eval

  +attitudes and social norms were found to be important to drinking intention

  --classifying 'types' of drinking is subjective
• LOUIS et al - whether stress influenced perceived attitudes

  a questionnaire were used to establish

  -life stress

  -body image

  -eating intentions

  found that positive attitudes to healthy eating intentions linked to healthy eating, and if a person was to perceive themselves as able to control their eating actually planned to eat less unhealthily
• LOUIS et al eval

  + suggests that if we can intervene to reduce stress and to tackle barriers to perceived control then people might intend to eat healthier.

  --shows us that the TPB alone cannot explain people's eating intentions