What do people think about changes in health behaviors? Differential perceptions of consequences of increases and decreases in health behaviors

Authors: Kiviniemi, Marc¹; Rothman, Alexander²

Source: Psychology and Health, Volume 23, Number 7, October 2008 , pp. 867-885(19)

Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

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Abstract:

Most health decision-making models posit that cost-benefit analyses underlie decisions to make changes in health-related behavioral practices. In a series of studies, participants imagined either increasing or decreasing the frequency of a variety of health behaviors and estimated the consequences of those changes. In Studies 1 and 2, individuals consistently estimated that increasing a health behavior produced greater consequences than did decreasing the behavior by an equivalent amount. The results of Study 3 demonstrated that this effect is due to differences in how individuals judge the impact of health behavior changes which involve not engaging in the behavior at all versus other types of changes. Taken together, these findings suggest that perceptions of the outcomes afforded by health behavior changes depend on both the behavioral frequency and direction of changes in behavior an individual is considering. This asymmetry has the potential to help explain patterns of behavior in a range of important health domains and may impact the effectiveness of behavior change interventions.

Keywords: Health decision-making models; health behaviour; close-response asymmetry

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14768320701360500

Affiliations: 1: Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska - Lincoln, NE, USA 2: Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

Publication date: 2008-10-01