Week 2 Flashcards
Changing health behavior
Steps in changing unhealthy behavior
- What is the target group and target behavior?
- What determinants play the most important role in predicting this behavior?
- Which determinants are susceptible to change in your target population?
Information provision
Giving people information about the wanted or unwanted behavior. Should take into account factors like outcome expertancies, personal relevance etc.
Tool 1:
Boosting self-efficacy
(Social Cognitive Theory)
Self-efficacy is important for behavior change. There are various sources of self-efficacy:
1. Own previous experiences
2. Vicarious others experiences
3. Verbal persuasion
4. Emotional arousal
Tool 2:
Using social norms
(Theory of Planned Behavior/ Reasoned Action Approach)
Social norms can be used in 4 different ways:
- Identification: you are more likely to change the behavior when you identify with the group.
- Majority norms: what most people do.
- Injunctive norms: what other people think you should do.
- Descriptive norms: telling people what they have to do. Is more effective.
Tool 3:
Fear appeals
(Health Behavior Model)
A persuasive communication that tries to scare people into changing their attitudes by conjuring negative consequences that will occur if they do not comply with the message recommendations.
The effectiveness of fear appeals depends on
- Vulnerability: you have to make sure that the behavior applies to hem –> they are vulnerable to it.
- Severity: if you engage in the behavior the consequences can be severe.
Extended Parallel Process Model
Explains how fear appeal works. When people experience a perceived threat and they are susceptible to this threat and they think that the consequences are severe enough –> this will create fear. This leads to protection motivation, which leads to danger control processen (like wearing a helmet on a bike).
The downside of fear appeals
Fear appeals should always go hand in hand with alternative behavior strategies, because otherwise they can engage in defensive responses like ignoring the information. This is why a lot of fear appeals (like pictures on cigarettes) are rarely effective.
Tool 4:
Self-monitoring
(Health Action Process Approach)
Evaluating your ongoing performance relative to the standard and responding accordingly (ex: your heart-rate, steps, quality of sleep etc.). Is small to medium effective, but can be seen as a promising technique.
Tool 5:
Implementation intentions / action planning
A self-regulation skill for making plans during the volitional phase. If you use this strategy then you assume that people are already motivated. You make an if-then plan of when, where and how you are going to perform the behavior.
Ex: if I come home I will put on my running shoes and go for a run.
The effectivity of implementation strategies / action planning
- It causes increased activation of the specified cue: the situation is more likely to be recognised in the moment as a good opportunity to act.
- It caused automatic activation of the specified response: you make a mental association between the situaton and the desired response.
Is medium to large effective.
Habits
A mental association between a cue and goal-directed behavior. A habit will develop when behavior is performed repeatedly in a stable environment. When it becomes habituated, the context triggers the behavior automatically.
Popcorn study of habits
Giving people old popcorn. They would still eat it with their dominant hand, because it is a habit. But they won’t eat it with their non-dominant hand, because the behavior is disrupted and not automatic anymore.
Nudging
(Dual process models)
Strategic use of mental shortcuts. Any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives. To count it as a nudge, it must be easy and cheap to avoid.
Different types of nudging
- Making use of salience: making things more or less noticeable.
- Social proof nudge: using social norms of people we identify with.
- Defaults: standard options.
