Lecture 1 Flashcards
Define health
There is no direct definition for health as it is subjective. However, objectively it’s the absence of disease.
Discuss Maslow’s theory of human motivation that forms health
Health is split into 5 factors, each progessively getting less important; physiological, safety, love, esteem and self-actualisation.
What are the two types of health behaviours that humans have?
Health impairing behaviours and health-protective behaviours.
These are also known as behavioural pathogens and behavioural immunogens.
What are the three key approaches to understanding health beliefs?
What do they combine to make?
Attribution theory
Risk perception
Self efficacy
Stage models and social cognition models
Discuss Heider’s attribution theory
It explores the process of attaching meaning to our/others’ behaviour. There are two sections; internal and external attributions. Internal meaning about the person and external meaning about the environment.
Within this theory is the covariation model developed by Kelley. The covariation model states that our judgements are influenced by; consensus (do other people have the same judgements?), distinctiveness (is this behaviour unique to the situation?) and consistency (does this judgement happen a lot?). It relies purely on past experience.
Another model in the attribution theory is the locus of control developed by Wallston. There are three elements; internal (you control your life), external (other forces control your life) and powerful others.
Discuss risk perception in terms of understanding health beliefs
One understanding of risk perception is unrealistic optimism. Weinstein claimed this occurs because of a lack of personal experience with the problem, the belief that you alone can solve the problem, the belief that the problem will never occur as it isn’t occurring now and the belief that the problem is infrequent.
We also undergo risk compensation; the balancing of bad health choices with good ones. For example, eating a banana after a McDonalds to be healthy.
Self affirmation is also a type of risk perception. This aims to reduce one’s defensiveness when presented with health risk information.
Briefly discuss self efficacy and health behaviours
Health behaviours are greatly affected by self efficacy. Self efficacy is the belief in your own capabilities to manage a situation.
Discuss the 4 basic properties of stage models?
Name 2 types of stage model
- They have a classification system to define the stage
- They have an ordering of stages
- When on the same stage you face similar barriers
- When on a different stage to others, you face different barriers.
Stages of change model (trans-theoretical) and the Health action process approach.
Discuss Prochaska’s stages of change model
Give an strength and weakness of the model
- Precontemplation; No interest in change
- Contemplation; thinking about change
- Preparation; planning to change
- Action; adopting new habits
- Maintenance; ongoing practise of change
There is decisional balance; people at earlier stages focus on the costs of changing and at the later stages you focus on the benefits. You can jump backwards from number 4 to number 2 for example. This model is dynamic meaning it works differently for everyone, for example the speed you change in.
Strength: It useful in terms of developing interventions for each stage of change.
Weakness: It’s hard to know if the stages exist or if the planning stage involves conscious decision making.
Discuss Schwarzer’s health action process model
Give a strength and a weakness of the model
- Motivational stage; this involves self efficacy, outcome expectancies and risk perception. These three combined from intention. They basically weigh up the costs and benefits of change.
- Pre-action phase; this involves action and coping planning.
- Action phase; this involves action maintenance. There are both cognitive factors (internal attributions) and situational factors (external attributions) involved in this stage. Cognitive factors; action plans and action control. Situational; social support and the absence of situational barriers.
This model emphasises the importance of self efficacy. This model makes a distinction between decision making and action maintenance; creating an intention/behaviour gap.
Strength: There is support that self efficacy is the best predictor of behavioural change.
Weakness: It doesn’t acknowledge how much situational factors after behavioural change. For example, quitting smoking is significantly harder if all your friends smoke.
Name three types of social cognition models
Discuss what social cognition models are
Health belief model
Protection motivation theory
Theory of reasoned action and planned behaviour
Social cognition models involve our health related expectancies. The most common ones include situation outcome expectancies and self efficacy expectancies. Our social cognitions are governed by our normative beliefs, e.g. people around you have a strong influence on your behavioural change.
Discuss the health belief model
It predicts and explains health related behaviours. It believes that your engagement in health promoting behaviours depends on your self efficacy and perceived benefits. There needs to be a cue to action in order to change your behaviour.
There are three parts; background, perceptions and actions. Your background consists of demographics, psychosocial aspects and structural aspects (knowledge). These form your perceptions which are split into either threats or expectations. From this, we get behavioural change as long as there is a cue to action, like the media.
The weakness of this model is that it ignores emotional factors or the impact of those around you.
Discuss the protection motivational theory
Give a weakness
It’s an expansion of the HBM as it also contains threat and coping appraisal.
There are 5 components; severity, susceptibility, fear (these three form threat appraisal), effectiveness and self efficacy (these two form coping appraisal). These five components form behaviour intention.
In this model, we get our sources of information from the environment and intrapersonally (past experiences).
Health campaigns tackle intrapersonal aspects and they show support for this model.
Weakness: This model assumes that everyone processes information rationally.
Discuss the theory of reasoned action and planned behaviour
Give a strength
Theory of reasoned action: Intention is formed from someone’s attitude and the subjective norms surrounding them. It involves the evaluation of our beliefs.
Theory of planned behaviour: This is the updated version of ToRA as it also includes behavioural control, which ties up with attitude and subjective norms to form intentions. Our perceived behavioural control is formed from external and internal attributions. Self efficacy plays an important role in this theory.
Strength: There is a lot of support for ToPB being used to predict intentions, however, it doesn’t successfully predict behaviour.
Describe a conceptual and a methodological problem with social cognition models
Discuss the main issue with them
Conceptual: They cannot be fully tested and there is huge overlap between models
Methodological: The participants may interpret the questions differently than intended when testing the models.
Almost all social cognition models can predict intention but not behaviour. This is because it ignores the gap between intention and behaviour when things like action plans are formed. Therefore, this gap should try to be bridged.
