Workgroup 2: Health and Medical Psychology

Health Belief Model

The Health Belief Model is a model based on fear and it is used to explain and predict health-related behaviours. According to this model, people’s beliefs about health problems, perceived benefits of action and barriers to action, and self-efficacy explain engagement (or lack of engagement) in health-promoting behaviour. Demographic variables, like age, race, cultural background and education all influence health related factors like perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, perceived barriers, cues to action and health motivation.

Perceived susceptibility is the subjective assessment of risk of developing a health problem. People who are more susceptible of developing health problem X will perform behaviours and actions to reduce their risk of developing it. For example: condom use to reduce the chance of getting unwanted pregnancies or an STD.

Perceived severity is the subjective assessment of the severity of health problem X and its potential consequences. People who perceive health problem X as serious are more likely to engage in behaviours to prevent the health problem from occurring or worsening. For example: condom use to reduce the chance of getting unwanted pregnancies or an STD.

Perceived benefits are the benefits that may occur when engaging in certain behaviour to prevent health problem X from occurring. For example: condom use from protection and not getting unwanted pregnancies or an STD.

Perceived barriers are subjective barriers which occur related to certain behaviour. For example: wanting to use condoms, but feeling awkward buying those.

Cues to action are cues which increase the chance of engaging in a certain behaviour. For example: condom use because you have had an STD before.

Social Cognition Theory

The Social Cognition Theory describes how one’s expectations are related to their performed health behaviour and their risk behaviour. Health behaviour has different coping functions, like problem solving, feeling better, avoidance, time out and prevention. According to this theory, there are multiple factors which influence self-efficacy judgements (“I can do this”). These factors are performance accomplishments (e.g. things you have learned from past experiences), vicarious experiments/modelling by others (e.g. seeing that your friends do not play video games as often as you do), social persuasion (e.g. coaching and evaluative feedback, your parents supporting you to engage in certain behaviours) and physiological and emotional states (e.g. when you play video games very often and experience back pains from your sitting position). An overview of this model is given on slide 41.

Theory of Reasoned Action and Theory of Planned Behaviour

The Theory of Reasoned Action describes how beliefs, attitudes, perceptions and expectations about behaviour X in a social context can lead to a certain behaviour.

The Theory of Planned Behaviour has an additive part to the theory of reasoned action. According to this model, perceived internal and external control factors may lead to perceived behavioural control, which then lead to behaviour intention and performing that specific behaviour. This model describes that people will change if they believe that:

They are susceptible to some disease
Developing the disease will have severe consequences
Adopting the health (preventive) behaviour will make them less susceptible or will reduce the severity
The benefits will outweigh the anticipated costs
They feel capable of doing

According to this model, people will change if: