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Presented at the Annual Society of Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) Conference
New Orleans, LA, January 21, 2005
Members of the Health Cognition Group presented an NCI-sponsored symposium at the 2005 meeting of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology in New Orleans. The group also hosted a discussion hour following the symposium concerning research and career development issues in social and health psychology.
Chair: Robert Croyle, National Cancer Institute
Co-chair: Kevin McCaul, North Dakota State University
Speakers:
Discussant: Peter Salovey, Yale University
Overview: Health behaviors are pervasive and have important influences on quality of life and mortality. Social psychologists have a long history of pursuing theoretical innovations that inform health psychology. Moreover, applying theoretical concepts to health behaviors can often change the way our theories work. The purpose of this symposium is to illustrate how various social psychological theories contribute to our understanding of the determinants of health behaviors and how these activities can, in turn, shape our theorizing. The session begins with a discussion of how images of others who do or do not engage in risk behaviors influences one's own health actions (Gerrard & Gibbons), and it is followed by a talk introducing deviation regulation theory, which also draws on social comparison but introduces unique predictions about the value of different reference groups (Blanton). The following two talks deal with how one defends the self-concept against health threats (Klein) and against thoughts of mortality (Arndt), with the latter talk linking death-related thoughts with health behaviors. The last presentation Illustrates the critical role that applied work plays in the refinement of theory (Rothman), and the session ends with a discussion of themes running through the presentations (e.g., defensiveness; comparison to others) and of the opportunities that this burgeoning field affords for social psychologists (Salovey).
Abstracts of the Presentations:
Meg Gerrard and Frederick X. Gibbons
Department of Psychology
Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa 50011
MGERRARD@IASTATE.EDU
Social Comparison Processes and Health Behavior: Demonstrating the Applicability of Social Theory to Interventions
Although longitudinal studies have linked social comparison processes with health outcomes, the emergence of effective interventions based on social comparison theory is a recent development. We present research on naturally occurring, health-related social comparison, and interventions based on this research.
Study 1 addresses social comparison processes in smoking cessation groups. The data supported the hypothesis that psychological distancing from the image of the "typical" smoker -- decreased perceptions of similarity -- plays a critical role in cessation, i.e., those who distanced were more likely to quit. Study 2 is a test of the efficacy of encouraging social comparison to promote exercising. College students were instructed to consider and describe prototypical non-exercisers. Results indicated that systematic consideration of this prototype increased exercise at a four-week follow-up. Study 3 is a test of an intervention designed to delay initiation of drinking among African American youth by fostering psychological distancing from the prototypical drinker their age. Eleven year-old children participated in group activities designed to elicit negative characteristics of the "typical" child their age who drinks. At the 7 month follow-up, the control group had significantly increased their alcohol consumption, whereas the intervention group had significantly decreased theirs. Furthermore, this effect was mediated by change in prototypes. Overall, these studies demonstrate that images associated with health risk behaviors are malleable, and that altering these images can be instrumental in altering behavior. Future research should explore the efficacy of other strategies for fostering social comparison as a tool in health behavior interventions.
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William Klein
wmklein@pitt.edu
Department of Psychology
University of Pittsburgh
Room 3105 Sennott Square
210 South Bouquet Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Self-Affirmation and the Processing of Threatening Health Information
Recent studies suggest that having people engage in self-affirmation (e.g., reflecting on a cherished value or an event or skill that is a source of pride) causes them to be less resistant to threatening health information (Reed & Aspinwall, 1998; Sherman, Nelson, & Steele, 2000). However, other work suggests that self-affirmation may cause risk perceptions to be less associated with past behavior and future intentions (Klein, Blier, & Janze, 2001). In this paper, I will attempt to reconcile these literatures by arguing that self-affirmation may promote acceptance but not internalization and retention of threatening health messages. I will also consider the processes that may underlie self-affirmation, and present data from three studies suggesting that (1) focusing on negative aspects of the self may have the same effects as those of self-affirmation under threat, (2) affirmations in the same domain as the threatening message may elicit more systematic processing of the message, and (3) cognitive dissonance - a state that has been shown to be resolved by self-affirmation - may inhibit memory for the content of threatening messages. In this talk, I will also present new analyses from the data reported in earlier self-affirmation studies which support the thesis that self-affirmation may hinder rather than enhance effective processing of health messages. I will conclude with several ideas for testing the conditions under which self-affirmation may elicit non-defensive processing of threatening health messages as well as internalization of the message and subsequent health behavior change.
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Jamie Arndt
arndtj@missouri.edu
Department of Psychological Sciences
McAlester Hall
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65203
Death and Health: A Terror Management Model of Health Behavior
Previous health research has not typically considered the unique motivations that may be provoked by people's awareness of death. Conversely, the terror management literature (see e.g., Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2004), though explicitly concerned with how the awareness of death effects social behavior, has ignored the domain of health-relevant decision making. In this talk I will present a terror management model of health behavior that seeks to bridge this gap and elucidate how the motivational concerns engendered by the conscious and unconscious awareness of mortality exert both adaptive and maladaptive influences on health-related decisions. Integrating contributions from health psychology, motivated cognition, and self-related literatures, I will argue that conscious fears about death lead to proximal defenses that aim to reduce perceived vulnerability, whereas unconscious death-related fears elicit distal defenses to maintain symbolic meaning and self-esteem. I will present a series of studies that examine the differential propensity to suppress death-related cognition as a function of conscious relative to unconscious health threats, as well as studies in the domains of exercise, sun-tanning, and breast self-exams that show conscious death thoughts engender reactions that reduce perceived vulnerability to health threats, but that unconscious concerns with death engender health oriented responses directed by specific contingencies of self-worth and efforts to maintain the symbolic integrity of the physical body (e.g., Arndt, Schimel, & Goldenberg, 2003; Routledge, Arndt, & Goldenberg, in press). I will conclude with suggestions for future research on how to engage different motivational systems to affect productive health behavior.
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Alexander J. Rothman
Rothm001@umn.edu
Department of Psychology
University of Minnesota
75 East River Road
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Is There Nothing So Practical as a Good Theory? Why Interventions are Needed to Promote Innovations in Social Psychological Theory
The degree to which behavioral practices contribute to current rates of disease morbidity and premature mortality is a staggering practical problem. Although efforts to specify the processes that underlie people's behavioral decisions are motivated, at least in part, by the promise that the theoretical principles that emerge from this work will advance initiatives to address practical problems, innovations in social psychological theory too often remain disconnected from the development of intervention strategies to promote healthy behavior. What should we conclude from this state of affairs? Was Lewin wrong to claim that there is "nothing so practical as a good theory"? In my presentation, I will assert that Lewin was correct, but that the "practical" value of our theories depends on investigators taking advantage of the opportunities that interventions afford for theory-testing and, in particular, using the data generated by these activities to affirm, refine, or reject theoretical principles. To illustrate this point, I will describe a series of intervention studies (in the domains of smoking cessation and weight loss) that were designed not only to improve how people initiate and maintain changes in their behavior, but also to test a series of predictions derived from a new model of behavioral decision-making. Specifically, these studies provide data to support the premise that the decision criteria that lead people to initiate a change in their behavior are distinct from those that lead them to maintain that pattern of behavior over time.
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