Reading focus
Syllabus: How Do Attitudes Form and Change?
Follow the links among attitudes toward a behavior, norms, intentions, and control.
Why you’re reading it. Explain why favorable evaluations can coexist with inaction without assuming hypocrisy or a useless measure.
A question to consider. For attending the library next week, write one matched attitude question and identify one perceived norm and one practical barrier.
Why this reading
A favorable attitude does not guarantee action. Ajzen explains a framework connecting evaluations, perceived social expectations, intentions, and the ability to act.
Before you read
An intention is a commitment or readiness to perform a behavior. Subjective norm means perceived social pressure. Perceived control is a belief about feasibility; actual control concerns the resources and opportunities available.
Read for
- Match the target, action, context, and time in each measure.
- Distinguish a general attitude toward an object from an attitude toward doing something.
- Examine the proposed feedback, mediation, and moderation relationships and what would test them.
Consider afterwards
- Someone values exercise and intends to attend a class but cannot get there. Which constructs would you measure before explaining the missed session?
Editorial context
This is the theory's author's clarification, not an independent comparison of all behavior models. Its constructs require local measurement work, not a universal questionnaire. Ajzen explicitly rejects treating intentions as an automatic substitute for observed behavior. Predictive associations alone do not establish every proposed causal pathway.