Lectures 17 and 18: Social psychology and Health

Question 1

What did Kurt Lewin say about theories in psychology

Answer 1

‘there is nothing so practical as a good theory’
A good theory within any area of psychology should be general, being able to be applied in different ways

Question 2

What is stress?

Answer 2

Stress → negative feelings and belief that occur when people feel they are struggling and can’t cope

Question 3

What 3 things does stress impact

Answer 3

Impacts affect (feelings), behaviour (actions) and cognitions (thoughts)

Question 4

Stress and Health: negative life events

How did Holmes and Rahe 1967 measure stress? What link did they find between stress and health?

Answer 4

• Objective quantification of stressful major life events: List of things that can happen to people, assigning these events a value (1-100)
• Based on normative data (i.e. how stressed would you be if your spouse died)

Results: Stressful life events correlate with anxiety and illness

Question 5

Stress and Health: negative life events

What 3 criticism are there with Holmes and Rahe’s work?

Answer 5

1. Cause and effect.
   - Its hard to infer causality between stress and health here. Was it the life event which caused stress and illness, or was it the other way around?
2. Third variables
   - Could another variable be influencing things or be underlying the effects of stress on health
3. Quantifying stress by life change units ignore subjective perceptions
   - 2 people may experience the same life event, i.e. retirement. Some people may not find this experience stressful, but instead, enjoyable!

Question 6

Stress and health: perceived stress and health

How did Lazarus 2006 argue we should measure stress?

Answer 6

• we should measure subjective experiences of stress, not objective stress
• Interpretation is important; we can interpret the same event in different ways (e.g. public speaking. some people struggle, some people don’t)

Question 7

Stress and health: perceived stress and health

What 3 things make events stressful?

Answer 7

Events are stressful when its cause is percieved as
- uncontrollable
- ambiguous
- unresolvable

Question 8

Stress and health: perceived stress and health

What did Cohen, Tyrell and Smith 1991 find in relation to perceived stress and physical health?

Answer 8

• Pps list negative life events (provided index of subjective stress)
• Pps were then exposed to the cold virus

Results=
- the more stress a pp had, the more likely they were to catch a cold
- The longer the stressor persisted, (1-24+ months), the higher the relative risk of catching a cold
- Work stressors are the thing that has the biggest effect on the risk of catching a cold

Question 9

Stress and Health: Perceived control

What is perceived control?

Answer 9

the belief that we can influence the environment

Question 10

Stress and Health: Perceived control

What did Taylor, Lichtman and Wood 1984 find in relation to percieved control and women with BC?

Answer 10

Women who felt they had some control over their breast cancer:
- Had better psychological adjustment
- Lived slightly longer (holding other variables constant)

Question 11

Stress and Health: Perceived control

What did Langer and Rodin 1976 find in relation to giving the elderly feelings of control?

Answer 11

When sent to retirement homes, some elderly people were allowed to
- Decide arrangement of their room
- Pick movie night
- Look after houseplants

Results= These participants in the ‘take control’ group:
- Self reported being happier
- Were rated as doing better by the nursing staff
- Spent longer visiting other patients
- Had lower mortality rate
Conclusion = Suggests a LASTING feeling of control can improve health outcomes

Question 12

Stress and Health: Perceived control

What did Schulz and Hanusa 1978 find in relation to temporary percieved control?

Answer 12

• Students visited elderly patients over a term:
• Condition 1: elderly decided time and length of visit
• Condition 2: student decided time and length of visit
• Initially the intervention worked, like Langer and Rodin found
• HOWEVER, 24-42 months later, pps in the take control group:
• Were less healthy
• Had less ‘zest for life’
• Had higher mortality rate
  Conclusion = Temporary control is bad

Question 13

Stress and Health: Learned Helplessness

What 3 attributions are associated with learned helplessness?

Answer 13

Attributing positive events to stable, internal and global factors is associated with learned helplessness

• Stable attribution: factors that wont change over time
• Internal attribution: something about you
• Global attribution: factors that apply across situations

Question 14

Stress and Health: Learned Helplessness

You just found out you failed your calculus test. How would someone with unstable, external, specific attributions react vs someone with stable, internal, global attributions?

Answer 14

person 1:
- unstable: things CAN change over time (they think they can improve)
- external: things were not caused by them (the test was hard)
- specific: factors dont apply across situations (they think they probably didnt do enough studying; end up getting a B next time

Person 2
- Stable: things cant change over time (they are stupid)
- Internal: things are caused by the person (its all their fault)
- Global: factors apply across situations (they are bad at everything)

Question 15

Stress and Health: Learned Helplessness

What did Wilson and Linville 1982 find about learned helplessness in uni students?

Answer 15

• Many students initially struggle at university (small fish in a big pond)
• So, some students told were told that people often perform poorly in the 1st year, but them improve (challenging attributions)

Results=
- Just being told that sometimes people struggle (changing mindsets and attributions) increased students GPAs greatly
- Furthermore, drop out rates were lower in experimental vs control

Question 16

Coping with stress: Confiding

What did Pennebaker et al 1988 find in relation to confiding?

Answer 16

• 50 healthy undergrad students
• Write about personal traumatic events OR write about trivial topics 20 minutes a day
• DV= health centre visits students had from the start to end of study

Results= writing about traumatic experience was beneficial – offers new insights and promotes self-awareness

Question 17

Coping with stress: Confiding

What conclusion did Pennebaker 1990,1997 come to about confiding?

Answer 17

Talking and writing about emotional experiences has positive effects

Question 18

Coping with stress: Confiding

What did Li et al 2010 find in relation to confiding and embodiment?

Answer 18

• Pps write about a recent decision they regret
• They place their writing into an envelope and give it to the experimenter (physical closure plus mental closure) OR just give it to the experimenter (just mental closure)
• Then rate their current affective state

Results=
- Those in the envelope condition reported less negative emotions
- Suggests that the act of physically closing the envelope enhanced feelings of psychological closure, and this then reduced negative affect

Question 19

Coping with stress: suppression

Does suppression help with stress?

Answer 19

no. Suppressing negative thoughts can produce obsession with those thoughts and add to stress

Question 20

Coping with stress: suppression

What did Wegner and Zanakos 1994 find in relation to suppression?

Answer 20

• Pps answered questions such as: ‘I often have thoughts that i try to avoid’
• This created the White bear suppression inventory (measure of suppression)
• WBSI correlated with Depression (more people suppress, more depress), OCD, Anxiety

Conclusion= Trying to suppress negative thoughts actually increased obsession with negative thoughts

Question 21

In what 6 ways can we improve health behaviour?

Answer 21

• Invoking Dissonance
• Alcohol and Decision Making
• Response Alternatives (Framing norms)
• Implementation Intentions
• Meditation
• Online tools

Question 22

Improving health behaviour

What makes a good intervention?

Answer 22

effective interventions should be theory-driven, allowing for generality (that is, having an intervention that can be applied to change many types of health behaviours)

Question 23

Improving health behaviour: Dissonance

What is dissonance? Can you provide an example?

Answer 23

Dissonance= discomfort resulting from holding inconsistent beliefs

• Dissonance causes negative arousal which we are motivated to reduce
• Example: you smoke cigarettes, and you know it is unhealthy to smoke cigarettes. to reduce dissonance, you either stopping smoking, or you rationalize smoking, by saying ‘research on smoking is not conclusive anyway’

Question 24

Improving health behaviour: Dissonance

What is hypocrisy, and what effect does it have?

Answer 24

hypocrisy → publicly endorse one behaviour but do the opposite
- Hypocrisy elicits dissonance

Question 25

Improving health behaviour: Dissonance

What did Stone et al 1994 find in relation to dissonance, hypocrisy and condom use?

Answer 25

Pps go to a lab, and are asked to endorse condom use and safe sex
- IV1: Pps are asked to either make a public commitment (make a video for high schoolers about the importance of safe sex) OR just write an essay about why you should practice safe sex (no public commitment)
- IV2: Pps are asked to also either think about a time they did not engage in safe sex (mindful of past failure) OR nothing (control)
- Hypocrisy condition= public commitment + mindful of past failure

• On the way out the lab, pps are then offered condoms for free
• DV1: number of condoms taken from the fishbowl
• DV2: 3 months later, proportion of times people used condoms

Results: People in the hypocrisy condition not only took more condoms than those in other conditions, but reported using condoms more than other conditions

Conclusion= Hypocrisy caused dissonance, and had an effect immediately and to a lesser degree (3 months later)

Question 26

Improving health behaviour: Dissonance

Hypocrisy has been used to change a range of health behaviours, but when is it most successful?

Answer 26

Peterson, Haynes and Olson 2008: dissonance should be more harmful for high self esteem individuals

Question 27

Improving health behaviour: Dissonance

What did Peterson et al 2008 find relating to self esteem and hypocrisy?

Answer 27

• Pps all cigarette smokers
• Hypocrisy and a control condition, also measuring the levels of self esteem one may have
• DV= Also measured individuals intentions to stop smoking

Results= Hypocrisy had a bigger effect on those with high self esteem
- Consistent with the idea that individuals differ in the extent to which they have negative affect elicited by dissonance/hypocrisy. If the negative affect is stronger among people with high self esteem, thats where youre more likely to see hypocrisy have an effect

Question 28

Improving health behaviour: Alcohol consumption and reducing drink driving behaviour

What is alcohol myopia (Steele and Jacobs 1990)

Answer 28

Alcohol myopia= alcohol reduces cognitive capacity, meaning we only react to salient and impelling cues

Question 29

Improving health behaviour: Alcohol consumption and reducing drink driving behaviour

What did MacDonald et al 1995 do/find in their first study exploring alcohol and attitudes towards drunk driving? What critical analysis is there toward this study?

Answer 29

Male participants come to the lab and are assigned to a sober or a drunk condition (drunk=limit of legal blood alcohol)
Pps were then asked to answer attitude questions towards drunk driving, such as:
- ‘I will drink and drive next time i am at a party’ (non contingency)
- ‘If i only had a short distance to drive, i would drive while intoxicated’ (contingency)
Prediction = drunk pps will have less negative attitudes toward drink-driving, but only when the question involves a contingency

Results= people who drank alcohol had less negative attitudes towards drinking and driving

CA= Study 1 arguably lacked ecological validity; people never go to a lab, get drunk, and make specific decisions based on whether they would drink drive or not. Situational factors always play a role.

Question 30

Improving health behaviour: Alcohol consumption and reducing drink driving behaviour

What did MacDonald et al 1995 do/find in their second study exploring alcohol and attitudes towards drunk driving?

Answer 30

• Diary study, people went to pub or party
• students drove to a pub. Students were tasked to call the lab and answer questions about their height, weight and alcohol consumption, alongside the drink driving questions, either on arrival (8:30pm) or later in the evening (12:30, after a drink)
• Calculating height, weight, amount of alcohol consumed allows us to figure out the participants blood alcohol level

Results=
- Drunk and sober participants were equally negative about non contingent messages about drunk driving
- HOWEVER, when drunk, participants were much less negative about contingent messages about drunk driving
^^ replicated lab study.

Question 31

Improving health behaviour: Alcohol consumption and reducing drink driving behaviour

What did MacDonald et al 1995 do/find in their third study exploring alcohol and attitudes towards drunk driving?

Answer 31

• Students drive to the pub
• Complete the contingent/non contingent attitude questions upon arrival (e.g. 8:30pm) or later in the evening (e.g. 12:30am)
• All pps were given a breathalyser at 12:30

Here, researchers are comparing:
- Pps who completed DV at 8:30 (but drunk at 12:30)
- Pps who completed DV at 12:30 (and were drunk)

Results: Pps who completed measures when drunk reported less negative attitudes towards drink driving when the items were contingent AGAIN

Question 32

Improving health behaviour: Response alternatives

What are response alternatives and how do they work on influencing behaviour?

Answer 32

Response alternatives focus on the number of alternatives you offer people in an answer sheet.

By varying the response alternatives you give to people, you can influence their perceptions of how often they might engage in a particular action.

For example: how many hours a night do you sleep?
Response list 1 = 3/4/5/6/7
Response list 2 = 6/7/8/9/10

People who sleep 7 hours a night will think they sleep a lot if they answer using scale 1. Answering scale 2 however, they will think that they do not sleep a lot.

Question 33

Improving health behaviour: Response alternatives

What did Schwarz et al 1985 do/find in relation to response alternatives and TV consumption

Answer 33

• pps were asked how much tv they watch a week
• Low frequency scale = less than half an hour, half an hr to 1hr, 1hr to 1 1/2hrs, 1 1/2 hrs to 2hrs, 2hrs+
• High frequency scale = less than 2hrs, 2hrs to 2 1/2hrs, 2 1/2hrs to 3hrs, 3 hrs to 3 1/2 hrs, more than 3 1/2 hrs.
• Immediately answering the above questions using one of the two scales, participants are asked ‘are you satisfied with how you spend your leisure time?’

Results= pps who answered low frequency scale were less satisfied

Question 34

Improving health behaviour: Response alternatives

What did Rothman, Haddock and Schwarz (2001) do/find in relation to response alternatives and safe sex?

Answer 34

Students were asked questions about sexual activity: ‘since you first became sexually active, how many sexual partners have you had?’
- Low frequency scale = 0/1/2/3+
- High frequency scale = 2 or less/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10+
After pps were asked sexual activity questions, they were asked questions about
- Riskiness of current behaviour
- Personal risk for future HIV infection
- Intentions to use condoms
Prediction: People in the low frequency might see themselves as being more high risk than people in the high frequency

Results:
- When asked about riskiness of current behaviour, those in the low frequency list thought they were in greater risk
- When asked about personal risk for HIV infection, those in the low frequency list thought they were in greater risk
- When asked about intentions to use condoms, those in the low frequency group had higher intentions.

Question 35

Improving health behaviour: Response alternatives

How might Rothman, Haddock and Schwarz (2001)’s research into safe sex and response alternatives have useful applications?

Answer 35

Telling people what to do about their sexual behaviour can have limited success due to:
- Reactance
- Forewarning of message
Using response alternatives prevents this.

Question 36

Improving health behaviour: Theory of planned behaviour

What is theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen 1991). Try your best to explain in as much detail as possible

Answer 36

The most direct predictor of what people do (behaviour) are peoples intentions

Behavioural attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control all come together and form intentions. Percieved behavioural control, however, also impacts the behaviour itself.

Behavioural attitude: attitude toward behavior (good or bad)
-I intend to put out my recycling each week because i think it is good for the environment
Subjective norm: what other people think about behaviours
- I intend to put out my recycling because my neighbours do it and they think it helps the environment
Percieved behavioural control: whether i believe i can carry out the behaviour
- I intend to put out my recycling weekly, but i might not be able to as it is only collected bi weekly (meaning i must drive weekly to complete the behaviour) (example of low behavioural control)

Question 37

Improving health behaviour: Theory of planned behaviour

What are behavioural attitudes

Answer 37

Behavioural attitude: attitude toward behavior (good or bad)
- I intend to put out my recycling each week because i think it is good for the environment

Question 38

Improving health behaviour: Theory of planned behaviour

What are subjective norms

Answer 38

Subjective norm: what other people think about behaviours
- I intend to put out my recycling because my neighbours do it and they think it helps the environment

Question 39

Improving health behaviour: Theory of planned behaviour

What is percieved behavioural control

Answer 39

Percieved behavioural control: whether i believe i can carry out the behaviour
- i intend to put out my recycling weekly, but i might not be able to as it is only collected bi weekly (meaning i must drive weekly to complete the behaviour) (low behavioural control)

Question 40

Improving health behaviour: Theory of planned behaviour

What are implementation intentions and how do they work

Answer 40

Implementation intentions = ‘If-then’ plans specifying a behaviour that a person will need to do to carry out to achieve a goal

By creating these if-then plans, we are more likely to carry out our behaviours.

Question 41

Improving health behaviour: Theory of planned behaviour

What did Orbell et al 1997 find in relation to Implementation intentions and BSE?

Answer 41

• Had a control group which doesn’t get implementation instructions, and an experimental group who did received implementation instructions
• DV= how often do women report carrying out this behaviour

Results= implementation plans had a significant effect on how much BSE would be carried out

Question 42

Improving health behaviour: Theory of planned behaviour

What CA is there of Orbell et al’s 1997 experiment?

Answer 42

Results showed:
- wide range of effects
- good long-term effects
- very simple

meaning it may be very well implemented as a health intervention

Question 43

Improving health behaviour: meditation and mindfulness

What did Galante et al 2014 find in their meta analysis of the effects of meditation

Answer 43

meditation associated with reduced stress, lower depression, increased cognitive control

Question 44

Improving health behaviour: meditation and mindfulness

What did Krusche, Cyhlarova, King & Williams, (2012) find in their study exploring mindfulness

Answer 44

• 100 participants, self-referred to an online mindfulness course
• 8-week course, with formal and informal mindfulness training
• Measured perceived stress, before and after course, and 1 month later
• Results: Percieved stress was significantly lower after completing the 8 week course, and perceived stress was even lower after 1 month

Question 45

Improving health behaviour: meditation and mindfulness

What did Jordan et al 2014 find in relation to mindfulness, meditation and eating

Answer 45

More mindful individuals showed healthier eating, in correlational and experimental studies

Question 46

Improving health behaviour: meditation and mindfulness

What did Tapper et al 2022 find when exploring research on mindful eating?

Answer 46

• Examined outcomes linked with mindful eating
  –> Present moment awareness with food (raisin exercise, how does it taste, think about textures, flavours, etc)
  –> Present moment awareness of cues linked with food

Results:
- found some evidence that mindfulness interventions can be helpful in weight management
- HOWEVER, most of these studies only showed short term effects
- Consequently, this research highlights the importance of tailored interventions

Question 47

Improving health behaviour: Online tools

What did Tapper et al 2014 do/find when exploring the use of online tools to improve healthy eating?

Answer 47

Used an online tool to improve healthy eating, getting people in the experimental group to think about these 3 things:
- Target motivation (dietary feedback and advice, analysing reasons for health values, thinking about health-related desires and concerns)
- Volition (implementation intentions with mental contrasting)
- Maintenance (health tips)
Pps logged in weekly (26 weeks), and completed a food frequency questionnaire and researchers measured their body (BMI), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) and heart rate variability (HRV) at a baseline level, 3 months and 6 months

Results=
- E group increased fruit and veg consumption relative to controls
- Overall reductions in saturated fat intake and sugar intake.
- Overall reductions in BMI and WHR (all p < .001)`

Question 48

Predictors of wellbeing during COVID: appraisals

What did Kirby et al 2022 find in relation to wellbeing and appraisals during the pandemic?

Answer 48

• Examined how different types of appraisals and coping mechanisms predicted well-being during COVID
• Data collected from 12 countries, N > 3500

Results=
- Positive well-being was predicted by optimistic appraisals (e.g., about meeting one’s physical needs) and accommodative coping (e.g., positive reappraisals, self-encouragement)
- Negative well-being was predicted by disengagement coping (e.g., self-isolation, behavioural disengagement)

Question 49

Predictors of wellbeing during COVID: biological, socioeconomic and psychological factors

What did Tuason et al 2021 find?

Answer 49

• Better well-being was positively predicted by physical health, spirituality, and job security
• Negative wellbeing was predicted by social and emotional loneliness

Question 50

Different messaging about COVID: need for affect and need for cognition

What are affect based messages, and what are cognition based messages

Answer 50

Affect based message: emotion based persuasive appeal (i.e. this drink is amazing, focus on all the positive aspects)
Cognitive persuasive appeals: fact based persuasive appeal (i.e. this drink is amazing because it is healthy and has low calories)

Question 51

Different messaging about COVID: need for affect and need for cognition

What do we mean by NFA and NFC, and how do these impact our perception of persuasive appeals?

Answer 51

Need for affect (NFA) – the degree to which people approach or avoid emotion-inducing situations
Need for cognition (NFC) – the degree to which people like to engage in effortful cognitive activity

affective versus cognitive persuasive appeals are most effective when they match an individual’s need for affect and need for cognition
SO
Someone who has NFA would be more susceptible to emotional messaging. (for example)

Question 52

Different messaging about COVID: need for affect and need for cognition

What did Giammusso et al 2012 do/find to explore attitudes towards lockdowns in relation to NFA and NFC?

Answer 52

• Tested whether matching affective/ cognitive appeals would apply to online information about COVID lockdown attitudes

Ps presented with a (fake) Tweet saying that a new lockdown would be needed, followed by a series of positive or negative affective and cognitive responses:
- I would be happy to go back into lockdown, I would feel safe (positive affect)
- I would be sad to get back into lockdown, I would feel alone (negative affect)
- A new lockdown would be useful; they are effective (positive cognitive)
- A new lockdown would be useless; they create more problems (negative cognitive)
DV= attitude towards lockdown

Hypothesis:
- Ps with high NFA and low NFC will have more positive attitudes when exposed to messages including positive affective responses (regardless of valence of cognitive responses).
- Ps with high NFC and low NFA will have more positive attitudes when exposed to messages including positive cognitive responses (regardless of valence of affective responses).
- AKA People will pay more attention to what they have a need for.

Results=
- Ps high in NFA and low in NFC reported attitudes that were consistent with the valence of the affective comments
- No effects of message content for Ps high in NFC and low in NFA
- Overall; Some evidence that matched evidence was more successful in eliciting attitude change

Conclusion= how you frame information in terms of being affective or cognitive changes attitudes towards lockdown