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Reaction Paper #2: Social Science Essay

Emily Shank

Pennsylvania State University

CAS 101N: Introduction to Human Communication

Professor Lori Bedell

April 5, 2021
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Being a college student, I understand how the views and beliefs of those around you can

lead to feelings of peer pressure. Maria Brann and Matthew L. Sutton understand this, and dive

deeper into the topic of smoking amongst young adults (ages 18-25). More specifically, these

researchers want to evaluate the “impact peer and social influences have … to communicate

about smoking-related behaviors” (Brann and Sutton, 2009, p. 3). This is an important topic to

address because smoking is incredibly harmful and can lead to future health issues. Additionally,

this topic is significant because of the unfortunate truth that many young adults do smoke, with

“26% [of young adults reporting] smoking in the month [they were] surveyed” (Substance Abuse

and Mental Health Services Administration). It is clear that smoking amongst young adults has

become a serious problem, warranting a scientific evaluation on how these smoking-related

communication behavior effects translate empirically.

Prior to their research, Brann and Sutton identify and define the Theory of Planned

Behavior (TPB). This is the concept that “a person’s behavior can be predicted by either

behavioral intentions (i.e., attitude toward behavior and subjective norms) or perceived

behavioral control” (Brann and Sutton, 2009, p. 3). This theory is being used because it is said to

have “a large amount of predictive power” (Brann and Sutton, 2009, p. 4) when it comes to

health. To delve more deeply into this, the researchers continue to discuss the three main aspects

of TPB. The first is attitude toward behavior, or a person’s feelings toward a certain action based

on their ideas and beliefs. The second is subjective norms, or a person’s idea of the outside

world’s reaction to their actions based on beliefs about social norms. The third and final aspect is

perceived behavioral control, or the amount of control a person has over the action being

observed. All of these combined are the basis of TPB, forming behavioral intention which

theorizes that “people act on behaviors they intend to do and do nothing if they have no intention
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of acting on a behavior” (Brann and Sutton, 2009, p. 3). To further this, the researchers applied

Nuewirth and Fredrick’s concept of communication, viewing it as an aspect of behavior. They

even went so far as to base their research off of Nuewirth and Fredrick’s previous study on

drinking behaviors and communication amongst college students, following a similar setup and

hypotheses. The result of previous study was that “TPB was a positive predictor of

communicating about drinking behaviors,” (Brann and Sutton, 2009, p. 4) so Brann and Sutton

hypothesized a similar outcome for smoking. To conclude, the researchers combined both TPB

and Nuewirth and Fredrick’s concept of communication to form the foundation of their study.

To test their hypotheses, researchers Brann and Sutton surveyed their participants. More

specifically, young adults were tested on the main aspects of TPB by answering a questionnaire

about three smoking-related situations and recording their intended responses. For attitude

toward behavior, students were asked to respond using a “7-point scale, rating [a smoking-

related] situation bad-good, foolish-wise, and rewarding-punishing” (Brann and Sutton, 2009, p.

6). For subjective norms, participants were asked to identify “how they felt others would want

them to respond in each of the three situations” (Brann and Sutton, 2009, p. 6). Finally,

perceived behavioral control was evaluated through self-efficacy by using another 7-point scale

to dictate how confident or not confident they were dealing with the situations. This leaves

behavioral intention as the dependent variable, which was done by once again rating “their

likelihood of using each communication action” (Brann and Sutton, 2009, p. 7). These questions

were the same as Nuewirth and Fredrick’s drinking communication behavior study, altered

slightly to fit smoking. All of this was used as the method of testing the relationship between

smoking behaviors and communication on young adults. I found this survey method and the
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specifics it would require to be fitting for this study. The research design was both feasible and

efficient, allowing a large of number of respondents to be surveyed effectively.

After analyzing previous theories, choosing an approach, and conducting the survey, the end

results of this study were not what the researchers had expected. Similar to Nuewirth and

Fredrick’s research, the attitude toward behavior and behavioral intention had a positive

correlation, but both the subjective norms and perceived behavioral outcome had no correlation

with behavioral intention. To elaborate, Brann and Sutton explained the positive correlation with

attitude by saying that “if a person feels strongly enough about a certain topic … then she or he

is likely to act on it” (Brann and Sutton, 2009, p. 8). However, the two lack of correlations left

the researchers wondering what caused this, since the drinking study and TPB had different

results? Their primary explanation was that it’s likely communication behavior is different when

comparing drinking and smoking, as the former has much more immediate negative impacts

compared to the latter. They also conclude that issues like “peer pressure might not be as big of

an influence as was once thought” (Brann and Sutton, 2009, p. 9). Finally, the biggest takeaway

of this study, is questioning the accuracy of TPB, at least when it comes to smoking and

communication. Ultimately, when moving forward, Brann and Sutton suggest changing the study

to have more smoking specific questions, instead of just following the layout of Nuewirth and

Fredrick’s study. Along with this, they recommend narrowing in on “communicative acts as

opposed to the intentions to engage in communicative behavior” (Brann and Sutton, 2009, p. 9).

I believe all these suggestions for future research will help to create a greater understanding of

smoking-related communication behavior, and whether TPB can accurately account for it.

After reading this article, I feel as though I’ve gained a greater understanding of how both

personal and social influences can affect people’s communicative behavior. I was honestly
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shocked with the results; peer pressure usually has such a tight hold on people that it was

interesting to see that there was no correlation between these social influences and the smoking

communication behavior. That being said, I feel as though if I participated in the study, my

results would have differed as I’m much more concerned about the long-term effects of smoking

and would be likely to communicate my concerns. However, if this experiment were conducted

again today, I wouldn’t be surprised if they found different results for TPB and smoking. Social

anxiety, introversion, and people pleasing are all behaviors that I believe have increased since the

original study. It seems people are much more self-aware and concerned with how they are

perceived by others, especially with social media, so I’d assume they’d give in to peer pressure

or be too scared to speak up. Additionally, there has also been a recent surge in popularity and

normalization of smoking marijuana and vapes/nicotine. This “trendiness” may also have an

effect on the results. Ultimately, I believe that this study should be conducted again as it seems

the topic needs further exploration. Along with this, I would agree with Brann and Sutton that the

future directions of this study should lead more towards a communicative acts approach rather

than focusing on intention, which may lead to more accurate results.

Now that I have examined and reported on both the humanities and social science papers,

I can safely say that I lean much more towards the humanities. I prefer it because it is less

empirical and research based, and instead focuses on the analyzation of rhetoric and applying

theories within texts. This is much more fascinating to me and easier to understand. However,

there are also downfalls for both types: social science papers may rely too much on statistics and

the humanities lack of data can both turn audiences away from reading. Despite their differences,

both of these types of epistemologies apply communication in order to reach their respective end

results. But, I would still pick a humanities article over a social science one any day (sorry)!
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References

Brann, M., & Sutton, M. L. (2009). The Theory of Planned Behavior and College Students'

Willingness to Talk about Smoking-Related Behaviors. Communication Research

Reports, 198-207. https://doi.org/10.1080/08824090903074399

Nuewirth, K., & Fredrick, E. (2004). Peer and social influence on opinion expression: Combining

the theories of planned behavior and the spiral of silence. Communication Research, 669-

703.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2008). Results from the 2007

National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings.

https://www.dpft.org/resources/NSDUHresults2007.pdf