We found that one unit increase in perceived objective severity increased the possibility of
desirable behavior about three times. The finding showed that this construct had a strong
power in predicting tooth-brushing behavior. In general perceived severity is a feeling that
might help an individual to perform a given health behavior. However, for the first time we
found that perceived severity contained two distinct concepts namely objective severity and
subjective severity. In fact this classification indicated that it is the perceived objective
severity that tiger performing a desirable behavior and not the perceived subjective severity.
Apparently, this classification led us to formulate an argument that since this age group of
students did not have abstract thinking and can only have objective imagination thus firstly
perceived severity could be two types (objective and subjective) and secondly this is the
objective severity that plays a role and not subjective severity when a target group is a young
adolescence.