theory of planned behaviour

• attitudes - a combination of favorable and unfavorable opinions about their addiction. Positive attitudes increase intention to gamble and negative attitudes decrease intention to gamble. If any individual has more negative attitudes towards their addiction than positive will form an intention to gamble less.
• subjective norms - beliefs about whether others approve or disapprove of the addictive behaviour. If an addicted person believes that the people who matter most to them disapprove of the addictive behaviour, then this would make them less likely to intend to engage in the addictive behaviour and therefore less likely to actually gamble/smoke and more likely to intend change their addictive behaviour.
• control - control a person feels they have over their own behaviour and ability to change influences their intention. This is based on:

  • Internal factors e.g. how determined they are, how confident they are
  • External factors e.g. support from other people, time to invest in therapy
  • Past experience e.g. if they have successfully given up before