Criticisms of TOPB Flashcards
What does the theory not take account for?
Affective factors Intention-behaviour gap Attitude strength Ambivalence Indifference
What does affective factors refer too?
The theory is too cognitive / rational
Doesn’t look at anticipated regret - how people would feel after they carried out a behaviour, or impulsivity - not thinking rationally about what they are doing
When people express their beliefs, this emotions aren’t anticipated, this means that the predictive value of intentions may be reduced
What are the 3 reasons for the intention behaviour gap?
Correspondance / compatibility - intentions and behaviour haven’t been measured in the same way
Intention stability - measure intentions then behaviour, but lots happens in between this - should nmeasure them near the same time
Lack of control - some people can’t control their behaviour, so intentions won’t turn into behaviour
What does attitude strength refer too?
Some attitudes are stable but some are flexible and don’t have important effects - if stable over time, they influence behaviour and resistant to persuasion attempt. If they are weak, the attitudes are more open to change
What does ambivalence refer too?
A psychological state in which a person holds mixed feelings (positive and negative) towards some psychological object - conflict in beliefs - attitude is either positive or negative, doesn’t allow the possibility for both
What does indifference refer too?
Not having an attitude towards something
People feel obliged to say that they have an attitude, they just fill in the survey with their gut attitude - this messes up the data
They should be located off the continuum of a scale - if they put neither, don’t know if they are ambivalent or indifferent?
What are we over influenced by?
Events which are happening soon - we choose impulsively when the consequences are at hand, but with restraint when they are deferred - so will change our mind
Attendance at a health club study - Sparks et al
197 ppts completed a questionnaire, which was administered face to face. TPB based questionnaire of attitudes towards exercising at a health club - prediction that higher ambivalence would be associated with weak intention-behaviour relationships
Results: as ambivalence goes up, the relationship between intention and behaviour goes down
How do you know that some people hold no attitudes?
If there is a fictious ethnic group made up, people will still express their views
How do we overcome indifference?
Converse - they need to be located off the continuum in a recognition of a non existent state - don’t use neither, as this isn’t helpful
What are the four possible reactions to attitude objects?
Positive attigue - high pos reaction and low neg reaction
Negative attitude - low pos reaction and high neg reaction
Dual attitudes - high pos attitude and high neg attitude
Indifference - low pos reaction and low neg reaction
Is the theory open to new variables?
Yes - it is open to the inclusion of additional predictors, if it can be shown that they capture a significant proportion of the variance in intention or behaviour - after the current variables have been taken into account
What should additional variables be?
Behaviour specific Causal factor Conceptually independent of other factors already in model Applicable to a range of behaviours Consistently improve prediction
What variables have been proposed?
Moral norms - rules of morality
Descriptive norms - perceptions of what others do
Self identity - perceptions of how people want to be
Anticipated affect/regret
The verdict on proposed additional variables: moral norm
NO
not relevant beyond a limited range of behaviours
but research has shown it applies to a wide range?
