The original PMT claimed that health-related behaviours are a product of four components:
1 Severity (e.g. ‘Bowel cancer is a serious illness’).
2 Susceptibility (e.g. ‘My chances of getting bowel cancer are high’).
3 Response effectiveness (e.g. ‘Changing my diet would improve my health’).
4 Self-efficacy (e.g. ‘I am confident that I can change my diet’).
These components predict behavioural intentions (e.g. ‘I intend to change my behaviour’), which are related to behaviour. Rogers (1985) has also suggested a role for a fifth component, fear (e.g. an emotional response), in response to education or information. The PMT describes severity, susceptibility and fear as relating to threat appraisal (i.e. appraising to outside threat) and response effectiveness and self-efficacy as relating to coping appraisal (i.e. appraising the individual themselves). According to the PMT, there are two types of sources of information, environmental (e.g. verbal persuasion, observational learning) and intrapersonal (e.g. prior experience). This information influences the five components of the PMT (self-efficacy, response effectiveness, severity, susceptibility, fear), which then elicit either an ‘adaptive’ coping response (i.e. behavioural intention) or a ‘maladaptive’ coping response (e.g. avoidance, denial).