Lecture 1

Question 1

What are many societal, health and wellbeing, and organizational issues dependent on or influenced by?

Answer 1

Human behaviour

Question 2

What can have a big impact on societal, health and wellbeing, and organizational issues?

Answer 2

Behaviour change techniques

Question 3

What are health behaviour determinants?

Answer 3

• Knowledge
• Skills
• Motivation
• Environment

Question 4

Knowledge as a health behaviour determinant

Answer 4

Knowledge

• About health
• About what healthy behaviour entails
• About consequences of behaviour

Question 5

Skills as a health behaviour determinant

Answer 5

• Self-regulation
• Obtaining knowledge
• Impact on behaviour
• Impact on environment

Question 6

Motivation as a health behaviour determinant

Answer 6

• Intrinsic motivation
• Incentives

Question 7

Which is an example of intrinsic motivation and which is an example of incentives?

• If people don’t like to behave healthily, it becomes much more difficult for them to behave healthy.
• If people don’t like to behave healthily, it becomes more difficult to influence certain incentives that there might be for healthy, but also for unhealthy behaviour.

Answer 7

Intrinsic motivation: If people don’t like to behave healthily, it becomes much more difficult for them to behave healthy.

Incentives: If people don’t like to behave healthily, it becomes more difficult to influence certain incentives that there might be for healthy, but also for unhealthy behaviour.

Question 8

Environment as a health behaviour determinant

Answer 8

Cues for behaviour

• May trigger certain behaviour

Social support

• Plays a role if people want to change their behaviour

Complexity (complex to navigate)

Question 9

Some core theory concepts

Answer 9

• Intention
• Automatic behaviour
• Norms

Question 10

Intention

Answer 10

• Intention-behaviour gap
  o That people want something, doesn’t mean that they’re actually going to do it.
• Self-regulation
• People who have a better self-regulation have a smaller intention-behaviour gap.

Question 11

Automatic behaviour

Answer 11

Habits

Impulse

• This doesn’t change if you give someone more information

Nudging

• This does not focus on more information but on automatic behaviour

Question 12

Norms

Answer 12

Injunctive

• What should we be doing according to others

Descriptive

• What you see other people doing

Question 13

Who makes interventions?

Answer 13

Psychologists but also a lot of other people.

Question 14

What should you look at when researching interventions?

Answer 14

It is important to look at who made an intervention and with what aim.

Question 15

What do interventions target?

Answer 15

Interventions don’t always target the actual determinants.

For example:

• Providing information/education/knowledge
• Telling people what to do
• Trying to scare people into behaving a certain way
  o This can work but it’s not advisable to do because it’s way too complex to get it right

Question 16

Effective behaviour change

Answer 16

Assumption: Attitude => Intention => Behaviour

Question 17

What are the following examples of?

• ‘Yelling at medical personnel is wrong, I should not do that’ => aggression decreases
• ‘Underage drinking is dangerous, so let’s not do that’ => drinking behaviour decreases
• ‘Snacking on sugary and fatty foods in unhealthy, so I will no longer do that’ => consumption and body weight decreases

Answer 17

The assumption of effective behaviour change

Question 18

Theory of planned behaviour

Answer 18

Attitude + subjective norm + perceived behavioural control => intention => behaviour

This theory assumes intention has a direct arrow to behaviour. But if you have a model with arrows, the effect is being diluted with each level.

Question 19

Meta-analysis on intention-behaviour association (Webb & Sheeran, 2006)

Answer 19

Successful interventions lead to medium to large effects on intention, and small to medium effects on behaviour. From all the intentions that you form, only 28% directly corresponds to the behaviour. If you do everything intentional you wouldn’t have time for anything else.

Question 20

What are the moderators of the meta-analysis on intention-behaviour association (Webb & Sheeran, 2006)?

Answer 20

• Control
• Habit
• Impulse
• Social context

Question 21

What do environmental cues trigger based on previously learned associations?

Answer 21

• Habits
• Impulses
• Goals (sometimes conflicting)
• (Social) norms

Question 22

How do environmental cues trigger social norms based on previously learned associations?

Answer 22

Injunctive norms

• (Perceived) expectancy of what others think of your behaviour; what you ‘ought’ to do

Descriptive norms

• What do others do?
• Descriptive norms are strong predictors of behaviour, because we want to belong.

You don’t have to be aware of this, most of the time it goes automatically.

Question 23

(Anti-) social norms

Answer 23

‘Broken window theory’ (Keizer, Lindenberg, & Steg, 2008)

• If your environment signals norm transgressive behaviour, it’s more likely that you will display that behaviour.
  o “If no one adheres to the rules, then why should I?”
• Does the visible ‘breaking’ of certain rules result in norms shifting in slightly different behaviour?
• 33% vs 69% drop their flyer on the ground in the non-graffiti condition vs graffiti condition.
  o People (sub)contionally look at the behaviour around them, and if they see visible rule breaking they are more likely to do so themselves.

Question 24

The first step in intervention development

Answer 24

Look at the underlying questions

• What are determinants of the behaviour?
• Under which conditions does the behaviour take place?
• What process guides this behaviour?
• Focus on attitudes and intentions?
• Focus on norms, context cues, associations, habits?

Question 25

Theory-driven interventions

Answer 25

With the help of the underlying questions, available knowledge, system and structure we are able to create more theory-driven interventions. By systematically using available knowledge and theory about human behaviour, better and more effective interventions can be designed and implemented. System: PATHS method

Question 26

System: PATHS method

Answer 26

- A guideline for the process of an intervention. o It doesn’t tell you anything about behaviour per se but it does show which steps to take if you want to build an intervention. - It gives you a structure. - A general approach that can encompass different intervention methods.

Question 27

PATHS (abbreviation)

Answer 27

- Problem – identifying and defining the problem - Analysis – developing theory-based explanations - Test – developing and testing a process model - Help – developing an intervention - Success – evaluating an intervention o The S was added later on

Question 28

P – Problem definition

Answer 28

Identifying and defining the problem. You have to define the problem in such a way that you can work with it for the rest of the process. A process withing a process: From problem to problem definition.

Question 29

What should the problem in the problem definition phase be?

Answer 29

A concrete, applied problem for which psychological theory can offer a solution - If it’s not applied in the sense that it’s something that really urges a solution but just an explanation, it can be difficult to analyze and to intervene.

Question 30

What is the end product of the problem definition phase?

Answer 30

A pragraph describing and defining the answers.

Question 31

What questions should the paragraph at the end of the problem definition phase of the PATHS answer?

Answer 31

- What is the problem? - Why is this a problem? - For whom is this a problem? - Who is the target group? - Can you already think of some possible or potential psychological causes that might be interesting to explore?

Question 32

A – Analysis

Answer 32

This is a big part of the expansion development process. Using theory to analyze the problem. Start by specifying an outcome variable that you want to focus on. Make sure that it is a behaviour, attitude, and/or emotion. At the end of the analysis there is a list of potential explanations and variables that are important for the outcome variable.

Question 33

What should the outcome variable in the analysis phase of the PATHS be?

Answer 33

- Relevant to the problem - Specific - Measurable o (Ideally) continuous o Something that can increase or decrease as a result of your intervention (so not a yes or no question)

Question 34

T - Test

Answer 34

Developing a process model - From outcome (right) to identified causes (left). - There can be interactions and thus moderators. Reinforcing/undermining arrows can be positive or negative. Testing the process model.

Question 35

What is the pocess of testing the process model in the testing phase of the PATHS?

Answer 35

Zoom in on each of the arrows Support each arrow with the literature review - Provide e.g., effect sizes, changeability ‘Test’ each arrow in your process model with literature review or your own research.

Question 36

H - Help

Answer 36

Developing your intervention. Channel: how will you reach the target group? Methods: theory-based methods for behaviour change. Application: operationalized methods tailored to the context.

Question 37

A complex process can lead to a simple intervention

Answer 37

As long as you have a good evidence base, the intervention can be anything. Many behaviors are guided by ‘heuristics’, or behavioral rules of thumb. Non-information based interventions can target these heuristics. Framing is the best technique to influence a heuristic.

Question 38

Examples of simple nudging interventions

Answer 38

- A small but full plate looks like a full portion, while the same portion on a large plate might not. - You switch milkshake labels from regular and low fat to high fat and regular.

Question 39

S- Success

Answer 39

Evaluating your intervention - Effect evaluation - Process evaluation

Question 40

Effect evaluation

Answer 40

You look at the effectiveness of your intervention by looking at the outcome variable.

Question 41

Process evaluation

Answer 41

You look at how your intervention was implemented, what the people thought of it, etc.