The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) states that personal action is influenced by three factors: attitude, subjective norm, and perceived control over a behavior. When all three come together, they form a person’s intent toward performing that behavior.
![A line of people and one of them is standing out of the line] (/assets/images/tpb01.png) Credit to Wikia</sub></sup>
Fitting in is a large part of the human condition. How your behaviors measure up to the behaviors of others can play a large role in making positive changes to your current habits. Often when a negative behavior has manifested, things like social awareness coupled with an individual’s own beliefs toward a given behavior may influence whether or not an action is taken. Like the image above, this challenges the user to consider whether their current behavior has room to improve.
![A screenshot of the Drinkless app] (/assets/images/tpb02.png) Credit to Crane et al. 2017</sub></sup>
“Because the normative pressure to stay in school is already perceived to be quite strong, only minor effects can be expected if interventions are targeted at these normative beliefs.”
While the quote above refers to minimal efficacy towards leveraging social norms to change some widely-accepted behaviors (as the societal view of staying in school is overwhelmingly strong) it can be leveraged in a variety of ways where opinion is not as strong. In more “socially grey” areas such as alcohol consumption, leveraging societal perceptions and norms to give users a baseline of how they compare can be a motivating factor towards planned behavior.
Ethically speaking, there are some concerns with leveraging societal norms to influence behavior. Often, social constructs can be extremely subjective, and there may not be one “correct” path for a person to take, or a user may feel shamed into a certain action based on the feedback received. It’s important to present the facts in a way that are convincing for the individual, but with the acknowledgement that there could be multiple paths that someone could take.
