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Health Psychology
Attribution theory
According to the basic tenets of attribution theory people attempt to provide a causal explanation for events in their world particularly if those events are unexpected and have personal relevance (Heider, 1958). Thus it is not surprising that people will generally seek a causal explanation for an illness, particularly one that is serious.
Attribution theory
Taylor et al. (1984) interviewed a sample of women who had been treated for breast cancer. They found that 95% of the women had a causal explanation for their cancer. These causes were classified as stress (41%), specific carcinogen (32%), heredity (26%), diet (17%), blow to breast (10%) and other (28%).
Attribution theory
They also asked the women who or what they considered responsible for the disease and found that 41% of the women blamed themselves, 10% blamed another person, 28% blamed the environment and 49% blamed chance. The patients were also asked whether they felt any control over their cancer and they found 56% felt they had some control.
Attribution Theory
Weiner et al. (1972) suggested that we can classify attributional dimensions along three dimensions:
1 Locus: the extent to which the cause is localized inside or outside the person. 2 Controllability: the extent to which the person has control over the cause. 3 Stability: the extent to which the cause is stable or changeable.
Unrealistic optimism
Unrealistic optimism focuses on perceptions of susceptibility and risk. Weinstein (1984) suggested that one of the reasons why people continued to practice unhealthy behaviours is due to inaccurate perceptions of risk and susceptibility - their unrealistic optimism.
Unrealistic optimism
He asked subjects to examine a list of health problems and displayed what "compared to other people of your age and sex, are your chances of getting the problem greater than, about the same, or less than theirs?" Most subjects believed they were less likely to get the health problem.
Unrealistic optimism
Weinstein (1987) described four cognitive factors that contribute to unrealistic optimism:
1. Lack of personal experience with the problem
2. The belief that the problem is preventable by individual action
Unrealistic optimism
3. The belief that if the problem has not yet appeared, it will not appear in the future 4. The belief that the problem is infrequent.
The transtheoretical model of change emphasises the dynamic nature of beliefs, time, and costs and benefits.
Individuals would go through these stages in order but might also go back to earlier stages. People in the later stages, e.g. maintenance, would tend to focus on the benefits (I feel healthier after giving up smoking), whereas people in the earlier stages tend to focus on the costs (I will be at a social disadvantage if I give up smoking).
A relationship has been found between level of education and the stage of change reached when contemplating taking regular exercise.
Those people with lower levels of education tended to be at an earlier stage of change (Booth et al. 1993), and therefore it could be argued that the model could be improved by taking account educational attainment in order to help predict the length of time a person is likely to remain at the earlier stages.
Bad
Schwarzer (1992) Ajzen does not describe either the order of the different beliefs or says what causes what (causality).
efficacy
Non-Rational processes
The defence mechanism of Denial
Cigarette smokers etc
The end