Answer to Question #268492 in Psychology for Baudouin

Question

Analyze a health-related behavior that is considered unhealthy (smoking, unhealthy eating, drinking too much, not getting enough sleep, not exercising, avoiding health screenings, etc.). Based on your readings, describe and analyze how health beliefs are related to this behavior using at least one of the models in the textbook. Examples: Stages of Change Model, Health Belief Model (HBM) or Protection Motivation Theory (PMT), Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Analyze and discuss the psychosocial (emotional, social, financial) influences on health-related behavior that you observe.  

Answer 1

Health behaviours are defined as the actions or the beahviours undertaken by the individual regarding

their health .Individuals may engage in healthy health behaviours like eating a balance diet ,sleeping for 8

hours or exercising daily or may engage in unhealthy health behaviours like excesssive drinking ,smoking

,sleeping for only 4 hours etc .

There are certain models proposed to explain why people engage in a particular health behaviour and

explains the factors that determine one's intention of and decisions engaging in the health behaviour .

I would like to explain the unhealthy behaviour of excesssing drinking using Theory of planned behaviour .

Theory of planned behaviour was proposed by Azjen that states that individuals are reasonable beings and

take into action the consequences and the goals while engaging in a behaviour .The individual's behaviour

is directly influenced by the intentions to engage in the behaviour or not .

Intentions are in turn shaped by three factors

1)Attitude about the behaviour that is defined as the personal evaluations about the behaviour and is

informed by the belief that individuals holds about the outcome of the behaviour and the evaluations of

the outcomes .

2) Subjective Norms around the behaviour : that is defined as the pressure perceived by the individual to

engage in the behaviour that in turn is determined by how his significant others view that behaviour and

how much the individual is motivated to comply to that subjective norm about the behaviour .

3)Perceived behavioural control also commonly known as self efficacy is the individual belief about being

in control of the behaviour or whether he ll be able to change the beahviour .

Perceived behavioural control can directly have an impact on intention to perform the behaviour .

In turn these three fcators along with other external factors like age ,stressors etc determine the intention

to engage in the behaviour .

For instance if an individual has a positive attitude towards drinking that he believes that it destresses one (

positive belief about the oucome ) and is not that harmful to health while on the other believes that

drinking alcohol significantly acts a destressor for him ( positive evaluations about the outcome )

And the subjective norms around the drinking behaviour is relaxed and if the norm is that drinking

excessively is normal and if individual belongs to a peer group where everyone drinks and holds a positive

attitude towards drinking (Belief of the significant others about drinking is positive ) and the individual feels

highly pressurised to conform to the peer pressure to drinking (high motivation to conform ) and he

believes that. he won't be able to reduce his drinking level or leave drinking (reduced perceived

behavioural control),then it will have an impact on his intention to drink and the individual will engage in

the drinking behaviour and will continue to maintain it until there is a change in these factors and his

intentions.

Biopsychosocial model proposes that health is influenced by biological as well as social and psychological

factors and there exists a two way interaction between them .similarly health behaviours not only impacts

one's physical health but also social and psychological health .

for instance drinking have drastic consequences for physical health like liver damage , blackout ,increase in

blood pressure etc ,reduced immunity ,disruption in brain capacity ,memory loss etc

1)Emotional factors like excessive distress caused due to a fight with a peer or a breakup of a long romantic

relationship or feeling depressed due to the death of a loved one can trigger one to resort to drinking . In

turn excessive use of alcohol can lead to addiction and increase in aggression level that might make the

individual more aggressive verbally as well as physically towards his family or peers that can lead.

2) Social factors like poverty , dysfunctional family ,born in a neighbouhood where there is addiction

problem can also lead one to adopt drinking behaviour .Other social factors like having a social group that

also engages in excessive drinking can also lead one to normalise the drinking behaviour and conform to

the peer pressure .

3)If individual has enough finance and resources to buy alcohol ,then he ll easily engage in the behaviour

as there are no financial barriers to the behaviour .If individual is low on finance ,then he has to overcome

the financial barrier to engage in drinking behaviour .