Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Social Sciences has gone in this seventeenth edition to social psychologists Icek Ajzen, Dolores Albarracín, Mahzarin Banaji, Anthony Greenwald and Richard Petty for “revolutionizing the way we understand and measure attitudes" with an influence that extends to “psychology, sociology, political science, education, health, economics and other areas.”
Izek Ajzen is the father of one of the most impactful models in the field of social psychology for explaining, predicting and modifying human behavior: the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). The professor first proposed this model in 1985 in a chapter of the book Action-control: From cognition to behavior and and later developed it in a seminal 1991 paper published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
The TPB, developed with the late Martin Fishbein, postulates that a person’s behavior is based on their intention, which rests in turn on three fundamental factors: their attitude towards the behavior in question (positive or negative evaluation towards performing the action); subjective norms (perceived social pressure to act in a given way, based on beliefs about the expectations of family members, friends and society in general); and perceived control of the behavior or self-sufficiency (that is, the individual’s perception of the ease or difficulty of performing the action, according to the resources, abilities and opportunities at their command).
00:04 Professor Ajzen, could you explain the Theory of Planned Behaviour, which the committee has highlighted as your main contribution, and in what ways it has helped us to understand the relation between attitudes and human behaviour?
01:07 How has your research been applied to understanding as well as modifying attitudes and behaviour in fields such as health, for instance with regard to vaccination and aids prevention?
02:01 What has your research shown about how to understand and improve attitudes and behaviour with regard to the environment, for instance in the use of public transportation?
02:51 What can your work illuminate about people’s political attitudes and their voting behaviour in today’s increasingly polarized societies?
Discover more here: frontiersofknowledgeawards-fbbva.es/noticias/frontiers-knowledge-award-17-edition-social-sciences-to-social-psychologists-ajzen-albarracin-banaji-greenwald-petty
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The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Social Sciences has gone in this seventeenth edition to social psychologists Icek Ajzen, Dolores Albarracín, Mahzarin Banaji, Anthony Greenwald and Richard Petty for “revolutionizing the way we understand and measure attitudes" with an influence that extends to “psychology, sociology, political science, education, health, economics and other areas.”
Izek Ajzen is the father of one of the most impactful models in the field of social psychology for explaining, predicting and modifying human behavior: the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). The professor first proposed this model in 1985 in a chapter of the book Action-control: From cognition to behavior and and later developed it in a seminal 1991 paper published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
The TPB, developed with the late Martin Fishbein, postulates that a person’s behavior is based on their intention, which rests in turn on three fundamental factors: their attitude towards the behavior in question (positive or negative evaluation towards performing the action); subjective norms (perceived social pressure to act in a given way, based on beliefs about the expectations of family members, friends and society in general); and perceived control of the behavior or self-sufficiency (that is, the individual’s perception of the ease or difficulty of performing the action, according to the resources, abilities and opportunities at their command).
00:04 Professor Ajzen, could you explain the Theory of Planned Behaviour, which the committee has highlighted as your main contribution, and in what ways it has helped us to understand the relation between attitudes and human behaviour?
01:07 How has your research been applied to understanding as well as modifying attitudes and behaviour in fields such as health, for instance with regard to vaccination and aids prevention?
02:01 What has your research shown about how to understand and improve attitudes and behaviour with regard to the environment, for instance in the use of public transportation?
02:51 What can your work illuminate about people’s political attitudes and their voting behaviour in today’s increasingly polarized societies?
Discover more here: frontiersofknowledgeawards-fbbva.es/noticias/frontiers-knowledge-award-17-edition-social-sciences-to-social-psychologists-ajzen-albarracin-banaji-greenwald-petty
Follow us and learn about all our initiatives: fbbva.es/en
