Reasoned Action, Theory of
Martin Fishbein · The International Encyclopedia of Communication · 2008
The theory of reasoned action (TRA) is a general theory of behavior that was first introduced in 1967 by Martin Fishbein, and was extended by Fishbein and Icek Ajzen (e.g., Fishbein & Ajzen 1975; Ajzen & Fishbein 1980). Developed largely in response to the repeated failure of traditional → attitude measures to predict specific behaviors, the theory began with the premise that the simplest and most efficient way to predict a given behavior was to ask a person whether he or she was or was not going to perform that behavior. Thus, according to the theory, performance or non‐performance of a given behavior is primarily determined by the strength of a person's intention to perform (or to not perform) that behavior, where intention is defined as the subjective likelihood that one will perform (or try to perform) the behavior in question (→ Attitude‐Behavior Consistency; Planned Behavior, Theory of).