Health Psychology

Using Health Psychology in your everyday practice

Karen Morgan, Perdana University Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland Medical School, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Robbert Sanderman, University of Groningen and Health and Technology University of Twente, The Netherlands.

What is practical about health psychology?

Health psychology is a young, dynamic and rapidly growing discipline of psychology. Health psychologists focus on applying psychological theory and research to:

  • promoting and maintaining health and preventing illness,
  • understanding how people react to, cope with and recover from illness,
  • personalizing treatments and interventions,
  • improving health care systems and health policy.

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If-Then Plans, Interventions, Mental Imagery, Planning

Harnessing your imagination: Using the power of mental imagery to change health behaviour

Martin S. Hagger, Curtin University, Australia and University of Jyväskylä, Finland and Dominic Conroy, Birkbeck University of London, UK

What is mental imagery?

People are usually quite good at imagining things. For example, people often act out future actions or scenarios in their mind, or daydream about fanciful possibilities. These imagined situations are often unstructured and unprompted. Psychologists have explored whether it is possible to harness this capacity for imagination as a way to improve people’s ability to achieve desired outcomes or goals.

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If-Then Plans, Planning

The Power of Planning

Peter M. Gollwitzer, New York University

Everyone has bad habits. You snack when distressed or you drink too much alcohol when relaxing with friends. You create unnecessary stress by letting the social media distract you from completing pressing work projects, or by getting into unnecessary arguments with colleagues, friends, and family. How can you change these bad habits?

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Fear is a bad counsellor
Fear, Incentives

Fear is a bad counsellor

Dr Gjalt-Jorn Peters, Open University, Netherlands

Fear appeals are a commonly used strategy to change behaviour. For instance the threatening and graphic fear-arousing communications now ever-present on tobacco packaging, and in campaigns to promote seatbelt use and discourage substance use. Despite the popularity and widespread use of these fear-arousing methods, research suggests that they may not be the best way to change behaviour, or to raise awareness or educate people.

How is this possible? Shouldn’t people be scared of things that could harm their health?  Surely no one who knows the risks would smoke, drive without a seatbelt, or use methamphetamine, right? Not quite…

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E-health, Interventions

E-health: hypes and hopes

Rik Crutzen, Maastricht University, The Netherlands

Nowadays, people use the Internet all the time and for a wide range of activities: from buying groceries to showing a funny cat-picture to a friend on the other side of the world. It is all possible. Also, the Internet is used more and more within the domain of health – often referred to as e-health. (more…)

Financial Incentives, Incentives

Does money really change everything? Using financial incentives and disincentives to change health behaviours

Dr Jean Adams, Centre for Diet & Activity Research, University of Cambridge

Since October last year, by law, large retailers in England have been charging customers 5p (€0.06) for ‘single-use plastic carrier bags’ – those flimsy plastic bags you get from supermarkets to carry your groceries home. The money raised is donated by retailers to ‘good causes’. In the first six months of the scheme, plastic bag use by major supermarkets decreased by more than 90% (that’s 7bn fewer bags!) and more than £29m (€32m) was donated to good causes. It’s hard not to conclude that a small financial disincentive can have a big impact on our behaviour.

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Automaticity, Habit

Getting into the habit: Applying the science of habit-formation to the real-world

By Benjamin Gardner, King’s College London

What is a ‘habit’?

Why do we eat popcorn while watching movies? The answer, for most, is that eating popcorn is a habitual response to watching movies. Psychologists define ‘habitual’ behaviours as actions that happen automatically, due to learned associations between situations (the movie theatre) and our responses to them (eating popcorn).

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