The Power of Behavior and the Theory of Planned Behavior: A Path to Well-being
The Theory of Planned Behavior connects beliefs, attitudes, and external influences to actions, shaping well-being. Research highlights the benefits of aligning personal values with societal roles and engaging in activities like exercise, which can reduce mortality by up to 29%. Achieving well-being requires self-awareness to reshape habits and foster a deeper connection with both ourselves and our environment.
Luciano Luca Carlino
12/12/20243 min read
If someone tries to research “Behavior” on some recognized database, it is understandable that many researchers are increasing in number in our living period. This is a good point to be aware of how many changes are happening by shifting from the medical-biological theory of reductionism to something bigger as an integral method of biopsychosocial factors.
I want to focus on one of the less criticized psychological model theories called the “Theory of planned behavior”. I am choosing It for the simple reason that it considers internal beliefs, external importance, and internal/external (mixed) beliefs. Such a thing is vital for the development of consciousness about attitude, subjective norms, and behavior control. All these things conduce to the behavioral intention or an objective behavior. This model is not anchored just to subjectivity, it is related to what the environment is; something that modifies our well-being as our pure being. Thanks to Kaida, N., & Kaida, K. (2016), we know that environmental satisfaction is linked to all-environmental behavior. This can let us think of one thing, as the sociologist of the XX century talked about the mirror self when someone reflects some being of the people that influence us, it is well known that the environment acts in the same way; we are directly linked to it, and we have to consider it for human research. So, in summary, the influenced points of research that I would consider are beliefs – connected to thoughts, emotions, and behaviors (as in CBT)-, and the environment – made by religion, community, culture, etc. -. Prati, G., Albanesi, C., & Pietrantoni, L. (2017) identified that if someone finds his/her value in society, something in which he/she can put the target, the person can live a eudaemonic state of well-being; a state that let the person more anchored to the self-expression and good environmental behaviors.
Let’s consider for example physical activity. In research conducted by Zhao, M., Veeranki, S. P., Magnussen, C. G., & Xi, B. (2020), they found that the Hazard Ratio (HR) of strengthening and aerobic exercise are respectively 0.89 and 0.71, this means that only exercise can allow a reducing of mortality up to 29%. This research is vital to understand how much important the movement is and how much important is to find a way to path it toward its execution. Suppose we use the Theory of Planned Behavior. In that case, we can know that the attitudes, the beliefs about the results, are influenced by personal and social beliefs about the possible results to obtain and their benefits – directly related to what information arrived -. All these results behaviors are contaminated by the importance that the people attribute, as the more importance we attribute to movement, the more we are pursuing an activity path toward it. Understanding internal and external targets can allow people to reveal their eudaimonic state, which can go over the phase of action into the management one. Therefore, internal, external, personal, and environmental beliefs drive our choices toward one element or another, they can create a behavioral intention that if not pushed on can be stopped there, or it can go through a radical change of the habits that stop us to the well-being path. The root of everything is self-awareness, as it indicates a state of thinking where the developed habits can be changed.
This research is important to understand that well-being is a discovery, not only of the place in which live, but overall, a discovery of ourselves. We have a personal identity that is there to be expressed, if we know what our centered skills are and how we can contribute to the environment we can be ready to discover the real sense of positive perception.
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References
Kaida, N., & Kaida, K. (2016). Facilitating Pro-environmental
Behavior: The Role of Pessimism and Anthropocentric
Environmental Values. Social Indicators Research, 126(3), 1243–1260.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/48714770
Prati, G., Albanesi, C., & Pietrantoni, L. (2017). Social Well-Being
and Pro-Environmental Behavior: A Cross-Lagged Panel Design.
Human Ecology Review, 23(1), 123–140.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26367967
Zhao, M., Veeranki, S. P., Magnussen, C. G., & Xi, B. (2020).
Recommended physical activity and all cause and cause specific
mortality in US adults: prospective cohort study. BMJ: British
Medical Journal, 370, 1–10.