L17 - Introduction to Health Psychology

Question 1

What is the WHO (1948) definition of health?

Answer 1

‘State of complete physical, mental and social well-being…not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’

Question 2

What is the Bircher (2005) definition of health?

Answer 2

‘A dynamic state of well-being characterised by a physical and mental potential, which satisfies the demands of life commensurate with age, culture, and personal responsibility’

Question 3

What is the Indigenous Australian people definition of health?

Answer 3

‘Not just the physical well-being of the individual but refers to the social, emotional, spiritual and cultural well-being of the whole community. This is a whole of life view and includes the cyclical concept of life-death-life’

Question 4

What are the 2 models of health and illness?

Describe them

Answer 4

Biomedical model of illness
o Symptoms of illness considered to have underlying pathology
o Removal of pathology&raquo_space; restored health
o May be mechanistic, too reductionist – ignores the fact that different people respond in different ways to illness because of differences (e.g. personality, social support, cultural beliefs)
 Focuses on the fact that the mind and body are different

Biopsychosocial model of illness
o Psychological and social factors can add to biological or biomedical explanations and understanding of health and illness
o Diseases and symptoms can be explained by a combination of physical, social, cultural, and psychological factors
o Employed in health psychology, allied health professionals, and increasingly in medicine

Question 5

What is health psychology?

Answer 5

Health psychology is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the application of psychological knowledge and techniques to health, illness and health care

Devoted to understanding psychological influences on how people:
o Stay healthy
o Why they become ill
o How they respond if they do become ill

Question 6

What is a stage based model?

What models of health behaviour follow this?

Answer 6

Stage based model - individuals can be at ‘discrete ordered stages’ each on denoting a greater inclination to change

E.g. Transtheoretical model

Question 7

What are social cognitive models?

What models of health behaviour follow this?

Answer 7

Health Belief Model & Theory of Planned Behaviour

Question 8

What are models focusing on post intentional behaviour?

What models of health behaviour follow this?

Answer 8

Some researchers have developed new models to explain what happens after you form an intention to perform a behaviour

E.g. Health Action Process Approach & Temporal Self-Regulation Theory

Question 9

Describe the Transtheoretical Model

Makes 2 broad assumptions

What are its strengths and limitations

Answer 9

Transtheoretical model provides a framework for explaining how behaviour change occurs as individuals move through stages of motivational readiness

• The model is not linear
• People can enter and exit at any point and some people may repeat a stage several times
• It implies that different interventions are appropriate at different stages of health behaviour change

Makes 2 broad assumptions:
o People move through stages of change
o Processes involved at each stage differ

Criticism
o An individual may be in several stages of change at one time
o Perhaps too much focus on motivation and intention – past behaviour is a more powerful predictor of future behaviour
o Participants stage of change may not be predictive of success of intervention
o Doesn’t consider social aspects of health behaviour, severity of illness/disease/outcome, characteristics of the individual

Question 10

Describe the Health Belief Model

Criticisms

Answer 10

• The HBM is a social cognitive model that attempts to explain and predict health behaviours
• This is done by focusing on the attitudes and beliefs of individuals
• Explores a variety of long and short term health behaviours

According to the model, a person’s readiness to take a health action (e.g. quit smoking, start exercising, practice safe sex) is determined by four main factors:
o Perceived severity or seriousness of the disease
o Perceived susceptibility of the disease
o Perceived benefits of the health action
o Perceived barriers to performing the action

Criticisms:
o Static model
 Does not allow for staged or dynamic process of change in beliefs which later models show
o Assumption that individuals are rational information processors and decisions-makers, which is not always the case
o Limited account of social influences on behaviour

Question 11

Describe the Theory of Planned Behaviour model

Strengths

Criticisms

Answer 11

• Behaviour is thought to be proximally determined by intention
• Intention is influenced by a person’s attitude towards the behaviour (outcome expectancy, outcome value) and their perception of social pressure regarding the behaviour (subjective norm)
• Perceived behaviour control (a person’s belief that they have control over their own behaviour in certain situations – similar to self-efficacy) can directly influence health behaviour

Strengths:

• The theory of planned behaviour addresses many of the criticisms of the health belief model
• The relationship between variables is well defined
• Includes consideration of the social influences on behaviour
• Considers whether the individual feels able to perform the behaviour

Criticisms:

• However…prediction of behaviour from TPB variables is significantly lower than the prediction of intention
• Intention to change is much easier to measure compared to actually being able to change (so is this actually a thing that can be measured)

Question 12

Describe the Health Action Process Approach

Requires what 2 separate processes?

Criticisms

Answer 12

• HAPA attempts to fill the ‘intention-behaviour gap’ by highlighting the role of self-efficacy and action plans
• It is particularly influential because it suggests that the adoption, initiation and maintenance of health behaviours must be explicitly viewed as a process that consists of at least
  o A pre-intentional motivation phase
  o A post intentional volition phase
• It emphasises the importance of self-efficacy
• Requires two separate processes:
  o Motivation (intention)
  o Volition (action)

Criticisms

• Very limited literature applying HAPA to behaviour
• Too rational? Emotion may be neglected
• The social and environmental influences are not considered as directly affecting behaviour, but rather as cognitions

Question 13

Describe the Temporal Self-Regulation Theory

How long does it take to break a habit?

Determined by what 3 factors?

Criticisms

Answer 13

• TST addresses criticism of the theory of planned behaviour
  o Adds variables to explain the intention-behaviour gap
• Takes 42 days to break habit, but about 6 months to completely break away from it
• It is novel in that it incorporates behavioural pre-potency (habits) and individual differences in self-regulatory capacity
• TST posits that health behaviour is proximally determined by three factors:
  o Intention strength
  o Behavioural pre-potency
  o Self-regulatory capacity
• The latter two constructs are theorised to have direct influences on behaviour and also to moderate the intention-behaviour link

Criticisms

• The body of research using temporal self-regulation theory is small (but growing!)
• We are still trying to find good ways to measure self-regulation and behavioural pre-potency
• It is unclear whether the model is better than the theory of planned behaviour (but it seems likely)