Free Custom «Theory of Reasoned Action and Planned Behavior» Essay Paper

Question 1

In 1967, psychologists came up with the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) to explain the subject of human behavior. Later in the year 1970, psychologists Icek Ajzen and Martin Fishbein expanded and revised the TRA to improve its propositions. As of the year 1980, TRA was applied in the study of human behavior as well as in creating appropriate interventions. Later in the year 1988, Ajzen and Fishbein noted TRA had inadequacies and this prompted them to develop the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to add to the existing model, hence, they based the development of TPB on the TRA researches. Tracking back in the history, TRA and TPB are presumed to have originated from the field of social psychology in early 1862, whereby psychologists had already begun developing theories to demonstrate how a person’s attitude influences behavior. The study of human behavior became a subject of interest for many psychologists between the year of 1918 and 1925, as many theories emerged. It can be postulated that these theories progressed in the second half of the 20^th century, when the field of psychology began to look at the term attitude. Many social scientists perceived that attitude as the greatest predictor of behavior. The idea remained debatable and relatively intact up to the early 1960’s when psychologists such as Ajzen and Fishbein reviewed the existing association between attitude and behavior. Thus, the paper seeks to provide an overview of the Theory of Reasoned Action and the Theory of Planned Behavior and the definition of relational links among the concepts in the theory.

The TPB is regarded as a supplementary model, which offers a broad and validated proposition that facilitates the understanding and predicting of human behavior. In other words, TBA has played a vital contribution to the study of human behavior (Downs & Hausenblas, 2005). On the contrary, TRA posits that peoples’ behavior can be determined by their actual intentions and motivation. Psychologists perceived that either intention is influenced by people’s attitude, which can, therefore, be a positive or a negative evaluation established from subjective norms and behavioral beliefs. Subjective norms entail the social pressure that evolves when an individual has to comply with the significance of the wishes of others and of behavior developed from normative beliefs. In other words, TRA assumes that when individuals have evaluated their attitude positively and from subjective norms and have come to believe that their significant others want them to engage in it, their intentions will increase and, as a result, they will choose to engage in those behaviors (Brannon & Feist, 2009).

Although TRA has achieved to predict different types of behaviors, its primary purpose was to explain volitional behavior, which is an internal and personal ability to engage. However, Ajzen and Fishbein opted to expand the TRA to accommodate a perceived behavioral control (PBC) by formulating the TPB, as the TRA was less able to influence a choice on whether to attend to a particular behavior or not. The added model of PBC provides a representation that explains the level of difficulty people encounter in an attempt to choose a particular conduct as well as personal skills and capability needed for executing it (Downs & Hausenblas, 2005). Concisely, TPB contribution revolves around the two primary proportions. First, it assumes that people will decide on the type of the behavior they intend to practice after they have positively evaluated the attitude and the belief that a significant other wants them to engage in it. Second, the chances of an individual engaging in particular actions are influenced by the strength of the intention and perceived behavioral control.

Nonetheless, the introduction of TPB has not successfully covered the inadequacies found in TRA since the studies have indicated that TPB develops using the global-level abstractions, which are the subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, as well as attitude. On the contrary, Ajzen suggested that the TPB model would be effective if it was constructed around the belief-level abstractions such as control, normative, and behavioral beliefs. In this respect, the formulated disparity between the higher global-level and lower beliefs level do not manifest neither a theoretical model nor trans-theoretical model, consequently justifying why these two models were highly used in the exercise of intervention studies. Additionally, there has been a wide range of literature in the field of social science, which attempts to examine the theoretical theories of the TPB model, which is consistently studied by social psychologist researchers (Armitage & Christian, 2011). Nevertheless, clinical psychologists attempted to justify the reliability of TPB by developing the social cognitive theory and the trans-theoretical models, which extensively examined the superior intervention efforts of TPB.

Further narrative and statistical review of the literature findings confirms the accuracy and supports the use of the TRA and the TPB for studying and explaining the association between attitude and behavior. However, there is a need to examine other cognitive variables to determine the predictability and accuracy of attitude and behavior. For example, Ajzen argued that the PBC was a better predictor or an intention, attitude, and behavior than the self-efficacy, while other psychologists believe that self-efficacy was a better predictor of exercise behavior than the PBC (Glanz, Rimer, & Viswanath, 2015). In addition, other psychologists argued that an individual past practiced behavior tends to influence the intention of conduct as well as the attitude towards intention. In a meta-analytical study to examine the impact of self-efficacy and past exercise behavior, the findings revealed that perceived behavioral control, self-efficacy, attitude, and subjective norms account for 4 percent in exercise intention and 60 percent in exercise behavior (Brannon & Feist, 2009). Moreover, self-efficacy provides a unique impact on intention and behavior. Ajzen and Fishbein suggested that the explanation of an association between intention and behavior has become accurate due to the contributions of past behavior and self-efficacy (Glanz, Rimer, & Viswanath, 2015).

As much as the two theories look like a subset of the each other, they have particular differences. One of the primary distinctions between TPB and TRA is the addition of PBC as a third determinant of behavioral intentions. In addition, PBC is determined by two internal factors, as perceived power and control indicate that the level of ease and difficulty as well as the likelihood of an individual to become successful tend to influence a person’s motivation. An individual has a chance to attain a high-perceived control over the behavior of an individual if they hold a strong belief about all existing aspects that could trigger a particular behavior. On the contrary, if an individual chooses to hold a strong control belief that hinders a particular conduct a person will have a lower percent of control. In this case, an individual can reflect past experiences, attitude towards the influential norms, and the anticipation of upcoming circumstances (Downs & Hausenblas, 2005).

Nonetheless, both TRA and TBP possess some limitations in the processes of predicting behavior. One of the restraints is that the determinants are not limited to the PBC, attitudes, and subjective norms. This affects the reliability of the prediction since there are many factors influencing the choice of behavior. Another limitation is that there may be a substantial gap of time between the assessment of the behavior intention and the actual behavior (Armitage & Christian, 2011). Psychologists believe that an individual intention might change during the time gap period. The final limitation is that both TRA and TPB are predictive models that predict a person’s action based on specific criteria: however, individuals do not always behave as expected by those criteria.

Question 2

Apart from predicting behaviors, Ajzen and Fishbein attempted to understand the deeper application of the theories by determining the intention of behaviors. The findings revealed that the three basic determinants of intention are the subjective norms of a behavior, the attitude towards a behavior and the PBC. Attitude is the primary element that determines the behavioral intention. It can be defined as a person’s positive or negative belief about engaging in a particular behavior, as such, these beliefs can be termed as behavioral beliefs (Downs & Hausenblas, 2005). No one would be willing to participate or perform a particular behavior before taking the time to evaluate the belief positively. It implies that an individual’s belief and thoughts about the consequences of adopting a particular behavior help in determining the nature of an attitude. In other words, people are known to be cautious enough to evaluate the weight of the outcomes before picking a particular action hence formulating the attitudes. These attitudes tend to have a direct impact on behavioral intention and are linked with both subjective norms and the PBC (Downs & Hausenblas, 2005).

Subjective norms are a function of a belief that an individual looks at to approve or disapprove before engaging in a specific behavior. All the beliefs associated with the concept of the subjective norm are termed as normative beliefs. In this respect, people choose to engage in a behavior that they think their significant others would approve. Accordingly, a significant other can be a sibling, a spouse, a physician, or a close friend. In other words, one cannot engage in an action that is likely to displease their friend, siblings, or a spouse: therefore, significant others instill some subjective norms which control the human behavior. However, this concept fails to apply when an individual chooses to engage in behaviors which are not fully under additional control, especially when the TRA is considered. The TPB explains that not all behaviors can be captured under volitional control, as some behaviors exist in continuums that change from full control to a complete lack of control. On the one hand, in such situation, a behavior does not require any special aspects, thus, an individual might have a total control after adopting the behavior (Glanz, Rimer, & Viswanath, 2015). On the other hand, a need for special aspects such as skills, information, ability, and emotions to execute a certain behavior may lead to lack of total control Additionally, the constraints act as the managing factors when an individual is contemplating the choice of a behavior, whereby they can be either internal or external. Internal factors can be termed as resources for an individual and include skills, emotions, abilities, information, and forms of emotions such as stress. Meanwhile, external factors include social situation and environmental factors (Glanz, Rimer, & Viswanath, 2015).

Finally, PBC can be defined as the degree at which the question of whether to engage in a particular behavior or not depends on the individual volitional control. People are hesitant to engage if they feel that they do not have the prerequisite resources to execute the action. This provides some constraints irrespective of whether an individual has developed a positive attitude towards the behavior or not. Unlike attitude and subjective norms, PBC tends to affect behaviors both directly and indirectly through behavioral intentions. Still, when there is a conceptual agreement between a person, actual control, and perceptions of control over behavior, a direct path from a perceived behavioral control is likely to emerge.