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Room
Seezimmer 2
Thursday, September 13  »  10:15 - 11:30
Symposium 3
Decision making and action: Perspectives from clinical and health psychology
Host
Urte Scholz (University of Zurich)
Chair
Urte Scholz (University of Zurich), Daniel Hausmann-Thürig (University of Zurich)
Discussant
Alexandra M. Freund (University of Zurich)
Knowledge alone is often insufficient for decision making let alone for behaviour change. The aim of this symposium is to deepen our understanding of both, decision making processes as well as processes of action implementation. The first talk of Hausmann et al. (University of Zurich) demonstrates that the desired level of confidence and therefore the extended search of information differ between healthy people and two clinical populations. The second paper by Kurzenhäuser and Hertwig (University of Basel) examined whether young people’s food choices are rather based on look/attractiveness of objects, personal preferences or object-related information. Moreover, complexity of heuristics for food choice will be looked at. The third paper by Scholz et al. (University of Zurich) focuses on processes that facilitate action implementation. Authors examine the relevance of dynamic change processes of volitional factors, such as action planning and action control, for successful change in behaviour. Finally, the contribution by Ziegelmann and Lippke (Freie Universität Berlin) aims at deepening our understanding of generic strategy use in planning. Authors show that strategy use is helpful for increased quality of planning and as a consequence for increased levels of behaviour. The four papers have been carried out in the field of health psychology (nutrition and physical activity) as well as in clinical populations (depression and schizophrenia).
Speakers
Daniel Hausmann-Thürig
The decision making process of depressive people: A high desired level of confidence as a subjective constraint?
Authors
Daniel Hausmann-Thürig (University of Zurich)
Decision making under uncertainty is often an evidence accumulation process, whereby people have to search for information in an active and sequential way. The decision when to stop the information search (stopping rule) is essentially driven by an evidence threshold, the point at which the decision maker subjectively has enough evidence for one of the given options. As we know very much about the confidence threshold in healthy people, we assume an increased desired level of confidence (DLC) for depressive people.
Twenty-five patients (with depressive symptoms), a healthy and a clinical control group (patients with Schizophrenia) were recruited from the Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf. They all played an exciting horse race game, where one had to bet on one of four horses, after having had the opportunity to search sequentially for probabilistic cue information (all displayed on an information board on a computer).
Depressive patients not only had a significantly higher measured DLC, they generally searched for more cue information. The decision patterns of the three groups are compared and discussed in more detail. Finally, in depressive patients, the implications of a higher need for information to be unable to act are discussed (indecisiveness).
Urte Scholz
Predictors of successful change in nutrition: A change-oriented perspective
Authors
Urte Scholz (University of Zurich)
Matthias Kliegel (University of Zurich)
Rainer Hornung (University of Zurich)
Objectives:
According to the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA; Schwarzer, 1992) behaviour change comprises a motivational phase that leads to intention formation and a volitional phase that covers the process of translating intentions into behaviour. This study’s focus was on associations between dynamic changes in motivational and volitional predictors with change in nutrition behaviour.
Method:
Data were collected online in the context of the commercial webbased nutrition programme “ebalance” (www.ebalance.ch). Overall, 469 participants completed the first questionnaire (81.9% women; mean age 44.25, SD = 12.40; mean BMI = 27.44, SD = 4.83). Three months later 344 persons (73.3%) participated a second time. Data were analysed by means of structural equation modelling with latent difference scores.
Results:
Change in intentions to eat a low-fat diet was predicted by change in self-efficacy, but contrary to our hypotheses change in the other motivational predictors, outcome expectancies and risk awareness, were unrelated to change in intentions. In line with our hypotheses change in low-fat diet was predicted by change in intentions, change in self-efficacy, and change in volitional factors, action planning and action control. All in all 34% of variance in behaviour change was explained.
Conclusions:
Results demonstrate that change in intentions, self-efficacy, and most important action planning and action control is crucial for successful change in behaviour.
Jochen Philipp Ziegelmann
Selection, Optimization and Compensation (SOC): Generic Strategy-Knowledge and Planning-Interventions
Authors
Jochen Philipp Ziegelmann (Freie Universität Berlin (D) )
Sonia Lippke (Freie Universität Berlin (D))
Introduction: Research on the implementation of complex health behaviors has shown that planning plays a major role in bridging the gap between intentions to engage in health behaviors and the initiation of those behaviors. As there is a strong relationship between planning and age-associated knowledge of SOC strategies, it is important to assess the interplay of strategy use and planning.
Method: 373 individuals in orthopedic outpatient rehabilitation (aged 18-80) were given a worksheet to facilitate planning for physical activities. Planning consisted of specifying action plans to facilitate action initiation, and coping plans to overcome barriers.
Results: Individuals high in generic strategy use generated a significantly higher amount of coping plans and were more successful regarding long term maintenance six months after discharge than those low in generic strategy use. There were no significant group differences in terms of action planning.
Discussion: As generic strategy use seems to have an impact on planning quality and subsequent enactment of plans, it seems to be important to offer a pretraining to enhance the repertoire of strategies for those low in generic strategy use to optimize the effect of planning.
Outlook: Linking barriers generated in a coping planning intervention to one of the SOC strategies should be crucial for intervention success. Likewise, when for a generated barrier no appropriate strategy was found this might be detrimental for self-efficacy.
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