ABSTRACT
Given that one of the major goals of psychologists is to understand, predict and change behaviour, it is not surprising that many theories have been proposed to do so. What is more surprising, however, is that most of these theories assume a distinction between attitude and subjective norm. An attitude is an evaluation of the behaviour under consideration and a subjective norm is a person’s opinion about what his/her important others think he/she should do. This distinction was first assumed by Fishbein (Fishbein, 1967; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975; Fishbein, 1980) as a component of what eventually became the ‘theory of reasoned action.’ According to this theory (e.g., Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein, 1980), behaviours are determined by intention^ to behave which, in turn, are determined by attitudes and subjective norms. Attitudes are determined by beliefs about the consequences of performing the behaviour and subjective norms are determined by beliefs about the opinions of specific others. More recently, some researchers have added variables to the theory. For example, Triandis (1980) added affect and habit, Ajzen (1988) added perceived behavioural control, and Fazio (1990) added a spontaneous process to the more ‘reasoned’ one proposed by Fishbein (1980). 2 But suppose, as Miniard and Cohen (1981) and Liska (1984) have argued, that the attitude-subjective norm distinction is not a correct one. In that case, the various theories that assume the distinction (e.g., Ajzen, 1988; Fazio, 1990; Fishbein, 1980; Taylor & Todd, 1995; Triandis, 1980 and others) would be invalid. Further, the intervention programs that have been based on these theories would be similarly invalid. Consequently, one important task for researchers has been to definitively support or disconfirm the distinction. However, although the first criticisms against the distinction were levelled over 15 years ago, it was not until recently that they were dealt with in a satisfactory manner. And, congruent with the theme of this book, some of the crucial contributions were rooted in basic social cognition research. Thus, the goal of this chapter is to review the relevant research, with emphasis on important experiments derived from the social cognition tradition.
