How People Learn New Behaviors

• Classical Conditioning  o A reflexive behavior can be elicited through repeated pairings of behavior  with an antecedent cue  Ex: When you give a dog food and pair it with ringing  a bell, the dog will start to salivate. After a while, when you just ring the bell  and don’t present it with any food, the dog will still start to salivate  
• Instrumental Conditioning  o A voluntary behavior can be learned by pairing the behavior with consequent  reinforcement   Ex: Give your puppy a treat once it successfully rolls over.  Eventually it’ll be easy to get it to roll over  

 

StimulusCResponse Theory

•    Future exercise behavior depends primarily on whether the exerciser experienced  positive or negative outcomes following previous exercise bouts
• There are four types of events that can follow a behavior and affect future behavior  o Positive Reinforcement  o Negative Reinforcement  o Punishment
• Extinction

Positive Reinforcement

• An enjoyable or pleasant outcome that makes a person feel good and that  strengthens a particular behavior   o Intrinsic Reinforcers: Rewards that come from within oneself
• Extrinsic Reinforcers: Rewards that come from other people or that you give  yourself

Negative Reinforcement

•    Generally unpleasant or aversive stimuli that, when withdrawn after a behavior,  will increase the frequency of that behavior in the future  Ex: Somebody with  arthritis who exercises actually experiences less pain, so they will work out more  often since it makes them feel better

 

Punishment

•    Unpleasant or uncomfortable stimulus encountered after a behavior, decreasing  the probability of that behavior happening in the future
•     Physical activity should never be used as a punishment; otherwise, individuals will  come to see it as highly aversive

 

Extinction

•    Withholding a positive stimulus after a behavior in order to decrease the  likelihood of that behavior happening again in the future  Ex: Decreasing  opportunities to socialize

 

Predictions of StimulusCResponse Theory

 

Events That Can Follow a Behavior	Description of Events	Predicted Effect on Future Exercise Behavior
Positive Reinforcement	Adding something positive Ex: Money, praise	Increases exercise
Negative Reinforcement	Taking away something  negative Ex: Pain, depression	Increases exercise
Punishment	Adding something negative Ex: Injury, embarrassment	Decreases exercise
Extinction	Taking away something  positive Ex: Opportunities to  socialize	Decreases exercise

 

 

Limitations of StimulusCResponse Theory

•    Does not consider the role of cognition or beliefs about an outcome
•    Limited in its ability to predict and explain exercise behavior
•    No information for developing interventions to change exercisers’ perceptions of a  particular outcome

Behavioral Economic Theory

•     Make highly reinforcing sedentary activities less attractive
•    Integrates stimulus-response theory and basic research on cognitive psychology and  decision making
•     A way to help people make healthier choices about how they spend their leisure time
•    Ex: If I’m a parent, I could say “Sure you can watch television and play video games  but then you’ll have to some chores around the house. On the other hand if you  decide to go outside and play with your friends, that you don’t have to do any  chores.”

Integrative Approaches

• Combine concepts from various theories and models to explain exercise behavior  o Transtheoretical Model  TTM

o Social Ecological Model

Transtheoretical Model

• Behavior change is not a quick process but a gradual progression through a series of  stages:

Pre-contemplation ! Contemplation ! Preparation ! Action ! Maintenance

•    PreLcontemplation: No intention to start exercising in the next six months
• Very stable o Cons > Pros

•    Contemplation: Intend to start exercising in the next six months

• Cons ≥ Pros

• Preparation: Intend to start exercising in the immediate future; taking actions to  prepare to exercise  o Pros > Cons
• Action: Exercising at optimal levels for health and fitness; hard to avoid falling back  into old lifestyles  o Least stable stage
• Maintenance: Exercising at optimal levels for 6 months; easier to maintain routine  than in the action stage  o Highly confident that they can continue their exercise program

 

How People Move Through The Stages

• Movement involves changing the following:   o How people think about exercise  important in the earlier stages
• How people think about themselves
• Environmental factors that influence exercise behavior

•    Changes occur through a combination of 10 basic experiential and behavioral  processes

 

Experiential and Behavioral Processes

• Experiential Processes  o Increase people’s awareness of, and change their thoughts and feelings about,  themselves and their exercise behavior
• Behavioral Processes

o Change aspects of the environment that can affect exercise participation

 

How Do We Know Someone in Moving Through the Stages?

•    Shift in decisional balance
• List more pros than cons of exercise if in the earlier stages, there is most  likely more cons than pros, and vice versa if in the later stages  
•  Increase in selfLefficacy to overcome temptations  o Confidence that he or she can deal with high-risk situations that might tempt  him or her to lapse into old sedentary ways
• Problem? Does not deal with the different types of self-efficacy task, coping,  scheduling , but rather in general
• Self-efficacy on a graph is a linear progression, the higher the self-efficacy the closer to the maintenance stage you are
• Hard to tell if someone is moving from one stage to next

 

Interventions for People in the Various Stages

PreLcontemplation: Education about the link between exercise and wellbeing  Ex: Videos

•    Tend to be the least successful interventions  in other words, it’s tough to get  sedentary people to become active

Contemplation: Will you feel good about yourself as a “couch potato?”

•     Likely to pay attention to material you present them

Preparation: Organize and start planning for new physically active lifestyle  Ex: Plan out  costs, find an exercise partner

Action: Tips on overcoming barriers and maintaining motivation

•    Imagery works very well

Maintenance: Need to plan ahead and identify situations that might cause them to lapse

•    Interventions are least important in this stages

 

Limitations of the Transtheoretical Model

•    Cannot reliably predict which stage a person will move to and when
•    Fails to fully explain the mechanisms by which people change their activity  behavior and move across the stages
•    Does not allow for the fact that many people do not exhibit a steady progression  through the stages; they may skip forward or regress back

 

Social Ecological Models

• Considers individual influences on health behavior as well as other levels of  influence on health behaviors  o Physical Environment

o Community  o Society   o Government

• Each person is significantly affected by interactions among overlapping ecosystems   o Ecosystem: Relationship between community of living things with each other  and their physical environment
•    At each level, different theories and models can be used to explain physical activity  behavior and create physical activity interventions

Microsystem: Immediate places we interact  Ex: School, work, home, gym, etc.

Mesosystem: Microsystems interact [Ex: Employer  work  and gym  facility  team up –  intramural league]

Exosystem: All systems influencing microsystems and mesosystem  Ex: School boards,  local health departments

Macrosystem: Sociocutural context  Ex: Societal values, politics, economics

 

A Social Ecological Model for Physical Activity

•     Supportive environments lead to an increase in physical activity in the community
• Community agencies and groups can influence policies to support physical activity  environments  o Ex: Increase in availability and access to facilities-programs, or increase in  active transportation  sidewalks, bike paths, etc.

 

Limitations of Social Ecological Models

• Time and cost of:  o Changing environments and policies

o Creating community-wide incentive and education programs

•     Building fitness facilities does not guarantee that people will use them