IS THE CONGRUENCE BETWEEN BEHAVIORAL INTENTION, ATTITUDE, NORM AND BEHAVIORAL CONTROL NORMATIVE?

The Theory of Planned Behavior has been criticized for the fact that it reflects an instinctive and naive psychology leading to a bias of congruence between intention and its determinants. We proceed from this hypothesis to evaluate the normativity of this type of judgment. 72 subjects had to evaluate the normativity of judgments congruent or not between intention, attitude, the subjective norm and behavioral control. The results revealed that congruent judgments were judged to be more normative when attitude and the subjective norm were involved. It is also the expression of a strong intention, which is perceived as normative when the item in the questionnaire refers to behavioral control. Normativity of congruence may explain why it is possible to observe a consistency between responses to this type of questionnaire. Our study suggests, furthermore, that this bias is the product of social influences particular to the context of the study.