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The Fallacy of Behaviour Change [pstamber.com]

 

Economists can be dull people. 

But one economist said something that has remained with me for years – that ‘poor diets’ are often excellent decisions on a money-to-calorie basis. You get more calories for what you spend, which is why ‘poor diets’ are a good thing for those lower down the socioeconomic gradient. 

From a health perspective, of course, ‘poor diets’ are a bad decision – that’s where my use of ‘poor’ clearly comes from. And so, in health, especially in the worlds of health promotion and prevention, there’s a fascination with getting people to eat ‘better’. 

This is one of the aims of so-called behaviour change. 

But the idea that behaviour can be changed relies on the assumption that an act is discrete, stable and homogenous. It is these assumed characteristics that help make it identifiable and observable – and hence measurable. But what if these assumptions are wrong? 

The idea of behaviour change started from the idea that decisions relating to health were anchored in ‘health beliefs’; decisions derived from deliberation and reason. This gave rise to research into, and the practice of, using education to change behaviours. 

But researchers and practitioners have found a stubborn gap between how people think about what to do and what they do. To make sense of this, they’ve reached back to the idea of self-efficacy, first described in 1977. The idea behind self-efficacy is that between intentions and actions lies the treacle of whether someone thinks they can do what they want to do. 

But despite this deeper understanding the gap has persisted. 

[To read more of this article, please click here.]

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