The Theory of Reasoned Action

Abstract

Although Fishbein and Ajzen’s theory of reasoned action has been a leading theory in social psychology for the last few decades, it also has been an object of criticism for much of that period and subject to definitional issues about what an attitude is. One of the main recent criticisms is that the theory is not falsifiable. In contrast, I argue not only that the theory makes risky predictions, and hence is falsifiable under reasonable standards of falsification, but also that at least one of its assumptions has actually been falsified. This specific argument is used to set up a more general argument that psychologists tend to subscribe to a naïve falsificationist viewpoint, invalidly use this viewpoint to evaluate theories, and thereby prevent important empirical research from being performed.