Theories of Health Behavior 2

Social cognitive theory 

Behavior change depends on: 

Self efficiency

Self efficiency

A person's belief that they will be able to execute a behavior 

• Our confidence that we will be able to do something 

• When we have higher self-efficacy, we try harder, we work harder, we experience less physiological stress

blittner et al study with smoking

Smoking cessation program based on social cognitive theory (Blittner et al) 

• Helping people quit smoking and gave them a personality test  

• Assigned them to 3 conditions  

• Cognitive self control group, the experimental group (they were told that their personality test showed that they would be successful)managing the stimuli, stimulus control group (teaching people to identify things and situations that tempt them to do their behavior they wish to avoid), control group (no treatment) 

They were tracked for 14 months to see who was successful: 

• The cognitive self control group was most successful to quit smoking when compared to the control group 

Takeaway: The researchers were able to manipulate self-efficacy and when they did so it advocated for people who had the lowest smoking rate in 14 months

Manipulated self-efficacy (cognitive self-control) 

Whether or not people will actually change their behavior depends on self-efficacy 

• High self-efficacy is associated with perseverance in the face of stress

Continuum model

health belief model 

Continuum Identify a set of factors that contribute to someone's behavior. 

Health belief model (rosenstock) 

How vulnerable we feel to that health threat

Rosenstock came to the conclusion that; People will not do a behavior to protect their health if they think they are not at risk for it while others will do it if they think they are at risk.  

4 factors influence participation in preventative health behaviors: 

Perceived susceptibility

Perceived severity

perceived benefits

perceived barriers

Perceived susceptibility

beliefs about the degree of health 

Example: if someone has low perceptability they are less likely to think they are at risk and avoid doing things such as wearing sunscreen.

Perceived severity 

beliefs about the consequences of the illness

• For example: how bad is skin cancer? People feel the need to protect themselves more if it has a severe outcome

Perceived benefits of behavior change

beliefs that engaging in the behavior will reduce the threat of the illness

Perceived barriers to behavior change

beliefs about obstacles to engaging in a behavior 

For example: high barriers: sunscreen is greasy and expensive and it gets in my way 

• Low barriers they are more likely to wear sunscreen 

Cues to action

any type of reminder about a potential health problem or behavior 

• Any kind of reminder can push people into taking action 

• Anything that puts a health behavior action in your mind

Self-efficacy

a person's beliefs that they will be able to execute a behavior

The main goal of self-efficacy n cues to action models is

To predict people's behavior

To design interventions that will work

When it includes self-efficacy there are more accurate actions and better interventions 

What is not good is at predicting people's habitual behavior (routine; something you do regularly)