RHP&EO is the electronic journal of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education

Theories About The Attitude-Behaviour Relation: Implications For Health Education

Jostein Rise

Department of Psychosocial science, Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen, Norway.

The attitude-behaviour (A-B relation is of utmost importance both in the research and practice of health education; thus attitude-campaigns are usually based upon the assumption that a change in attitudes is followed by a change in health behaviour. This paper intends to address some theoretical issues of the A-B relation with relevance for health education. Recent A-B reviews have proposed the MODE-model as an integrative framework for the multiple processes by which attitudes guide behaviour (Fazio, 1990). The model postulates that if people are highly motivated to make a correct decision and are able to use the relevant available information, then they are likely to engage in a deliberate and thoughtful process in deciding how to behave (the theory of reasoned action). In this case persuasive health education strategies may provide new and relevant information in order to change or supplement one's attitudes towards a particular health behaviour. If these conditions are not met, then a particular health behaviour will be guided by a global attitude (towards health) to the extent this can be spontaneously activated upon confrontation with the attitude object (i.e. highly accessible in memory). Accessible attitudes are less susceptible to change as a function of new information than less accessible attitudes. Thus persuasive strategies will be most effective if they are targeted towards segments of the population which hold relatively inaccessible attitudes.

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