Health Promotion Programs: Health and Social Life - Research Paper Example

Health is the complete soundness of body and mind. It is the freedom from disease and disability. Alas, people don't generally consider health as an important blessing of God, rather they waste their health in pursuance of materialistic gains. Life is perceived as a constant struggle for stability in monetary terms, and usually this struggle comes with a sacrifice of health. People are more or less aware of all the health factors involved in their various habits, but they hardly ever approach health practitioners as they are habited to rejecting their body. Many health habits are developed and consolidated during adolescence, and the health habits that are developed during adolescence will continue to influence health throughout life span (Cobb,1998). People with different attitudes tend to regard different aspects of an issue as salient (Richard, 1986). For example, a smoker would opt for mental relaxation, pleasure and relief, whereas a non-smoker would be more concerned for their health and well-being. To change this attitude of people, health practitioners have come up with health promotion campaigns and schemes. Health promotion is basically an education that is imparted to people, so that they can maintain their health and develop a healthy lifestyle. According to Keith Tones (2001), health promotion is an essentially contested concept: it means different things to different people. Since health itself is a multi-dimensional notion-open to multiple interpretations-it is unsurprising that the definition of health promotion is itself problematic. As per Donald J (2004), the roots of today's health promotion and wellness programs lie in the Industrial Revolution. The creation of large factories meant that thousands of people were brought together in congested, unsafe worksites located in congested unsafe cities. The inhumane conditions gave rise to numerous labor laws and worksite programs. However, the ascendance of technology in health care caused costs to escalate rapidly and making health care accessible to all became an important goal of providers. But, generally people don't have much of a positive attitude towards health promotion. Major campaigns and advertisements have been launched to create awareness among people about the major health problems that they face. Unfortunately, majority of the public consider these health promotion schemes to be time consuming and a wastage of monetary resource. The approach towards health promotion has never much been in the positive side. This mind-set is clearly visible in a major issue such as smoking. Thousands of campaigns, promotions, awareness programs have been created all over the world to make people understand the danger that smoking poses, but, still each day a large number of people become smokers. Every single person is aware of the life altering affects of tobacco and nicotine. Smoking is considered as fashionable and elegant by adults, whereas, for teenagers it guarantees acceptance and popularity among peers. Though people know the repercussion of smoking, the desire of approval, and the fear of rejection in social groups, causes the individual to neglect the health risk. Many smokers claim that their habit helps them to relax, but there is no doubt that smoking is harmful to health and has a detrimental effect on athletic performance. As mentioned by David.J.Gilbert (1995), the social aspects of smoking reduce social anxiety, and its ability to reduce muscle tension produces relaxation and counteracts the distress associated with a variety of negative effects.Therefore, with the craving of acceptance and relaxation for a stressed mind, a single cigarette a day eventually turns into multiple packets. It is very necessary to help such people change their attitude towards the menace of smoking, as this is the wrong approach of earning acceptance. If they follow this path they might loose their loved ones, their peace of mind, their joy and possibly their whole life. Smokers pose a risk not only to themselves, but to everyone around them. Smoking mothers could kill their unborn infant, a smoking husband may harm his wife's well-being. A person does not care for himself, but he would never want to be the cause of death and illness of his loved ones. If such a tragedy happens, the man looses his state of mind and gradually walks on the path of slow death. It is necessary to first understand the concept of attitude and its various reflections in different people. Understanding of attitude would be helpful in encouraging the public to improve their health, and live a socially and psychologically peaceful life. Attitude is a complex way of thought, involving various beliefs and emotions. It is certain actions that reflect people's state of mind. According to the research by Dolores Albarracin (2005), Attitude is defined as psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor. Most people constantly evaluate various aspects of their environment; Attitudes are formed as a result of this evaluation. Thus, attitudes may influence individuals to adopt or reject specific health-related behaviors. Three basic components complete the understanding of attitude and those are Affect, Behavior and Cognition. Affect is the emotional response that expresses an individual's preference to a situation. Behavior is the verbal or physical intentions of the person, whereas cognition refers to the process of thought, beliefs and experience of the individual. All these components have a relationship between them and we will be using the theories of Cognitive Dissonance Theory 1957 (CDT) & Petty and Cacioppo's Elaboration Likelihood Model 1986 (ELM) to examine these components and eventually their link to people's attitude towards health promotion. Cognitive Dissonance Theory, developed in 1957, by Leon Festinger is adopted from social psychology. Cognitive means the thinking or the state of mind. Cognitive dissonance is the psychological conflict from holding two or more incompatible beliefs simultaneously. The theory suggests that dissonance results when an individual must choose between attitudes and behaviors that are contradictory. CDT views individuals as more persistent decision makers; they strive for balance in their beliefs. If presented with decisions or information that create dissonance, they use dissonance-reduction strategies to regain equilibrium, especially if the dissonance affects their self-esteem. There are two factors which give rise to dissonance. The number of dissonant beliefs, and the importance attached to each belief. Also there are three ways to deal with dissonance; reducing the importance of the dissonant beliefs, adding more consonant beliefs that prevail over the dissonant beliefs, or completely eliminate the dissonant beliefs so that they are no longer inconsistent. As stated by Leon Festinger (1962) himself, "The existence of dissonance, being psychologically uncomfortable, will motivate the person to try to reduce the dissonance and achieve consonance. This theory applies to all situations involving attitude formation and change. This theory is able to manipulate people into certain behavior, by doing so these people will alter their attitudes themselves. It is especially relevant to decision-making and problem-solving. The following example, a study of smoking behaviors will clarify this concept. Assume a man is an extensive smoker, one day he hears that a relative has been affected with lung cancer because of chain smoking. He may not live for long. This news jolts him out of his present state. Now he is face to face with the reality of health hazards associated with smoking, but he does not yet wish to quit. Dissonance occurs when he is aware of health problems but does not want to quit. This dissonance may be reduced by altering behavior, start going for health promotion campaigns, to work on quitting smoking. With knowing that doing so is smart or simply removing the dissonance by deciding to go on with the smoking no matter what may happen. Another way could be if he would be able to reduce the dissonance instead of eliminating it completely. He could do this by seeking information consonant with the behavior. He could gradually diminish the smoking addiction gradually by meditation or yoga and start a healthy diet. The point here to prove is that if the man's relative would not have been affected lung cancer, he would not have to face this dissonance. Using the theory of cognitive dissonance can prove to be one of the most effective ways of dealing with health promotion. Dissonance regarding smoking and quitting it is prevalent in every heavy smoker, however they are not able to decide what course of action to take. Hence, a attitude change is seen in such people. This theory could be used to make questionnaires, and to help people understand how they can gradually diminish their dissonance using a positive approach. Health promoters could select the basic problem, help people to plan an attack on the problem and provide suitable materials and guidance to enable them to make positive changes in their health behavior. For instance, the smoker described above could choose four courses of thinking and acting. He may smoke because of a social bonding, he may stop because of health risks, he may deny himself of the hazards or simply he may compromise by changing to a low-tar brand. These are the points on which health promoters can work, and if such issues are tackled well, the public's attitude towards health would be considerably positive. The second theory is also a branch of social psychology. This is the Elaboration Likelihood Model, developed by Petty and Cacioppo. The ELM is based on the idea that attitudes are important because it guides decisions and behaviors. According to this theory persuasion is the crucial source of attitude. ELM provides a general framework for understanding the basic processes underlying the effectiveness of persuasive communications. It brought into light two powerful routes of persuasion. The first type of persuasion is known as the Central Route. This persuasion arises from an individual's careful and thoughtful analyzing of information. The main point in this cognition is involvement, the extent to which an individual is willing to think about the advocated situation and its true merits .When people are motivated and able to think about the content of the message, elaboration is high. The word elaboration here actually mean the extent to which a person thinks about the issue-relevant arguments contained in a message. When situations advance people's motivation and ability in issue-relevant thinking then the elaboration likelihood is said to be high. Elaboration involves cognitive processes such as evaluation, recall, critical judgment, and inferential judgment.; If the message arguments are strong, information is processed through the central route . However, according to Kenneth (2001), Elaboration of a message does not always lead to acceptance. If the message does not make sense or does not fit the person's knowledge and beliefs, elaboration may lead to rejection. Central route processors elaborate on the message by filling in the gaps with their own knowledge and beliefs. Messages processed this way are more firmly tied to other attitudes and are, therefore, more resistant to change. Attitude change that results from central route processing is stable, long-lasting, and difficult to reverse. The Peripheral route elaboration is the opposite of the central route. Here elaboration is low, as the individual is not required to think in terms of issue-relevant arguments. He does not have to scrutinize a situation and its true merits. The person is not guided by his or her estimation of the message, rather he just follows a principle derived from the situation. Emotional cues are very effective in persuading peripheral route processors (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). ELM shows that a number of variables exist that can strengthen persuasion by influencing a message receiver's motivation or ability to think about the communication. Hence, these processes determine whether central or peripheral effort processes are more likely to influence attitudes. Responses to a persuasive message are also dependent on situational and personal factors that influence the motivation of thinking in ways that diverts the thinking process. Again using the case of a smoker, ELM can be explained. A smoker needs constant persuasion, to be able to eventually quit this habit. ELM works on the idea of conveying a strong message, something that would persuade the individual to start using his central route of thought process. If his cognitive process is stimulated, he may turn out to be very determined to improve his health. In this century where print and digital media rules every mind on earth, could be a ground on which ELM can be used to encourage people towards health promotion. Media usually leaves a deep impact on a person's thought process, and this is the ideal source for further development of ELM. Hence ELM could also be another very effective way to change people's attitude towards health promotion. An important point to note is that attitudes are most frequently measured using some type of direct self-report procedure, such as asking a person how positive or negative he or she is towards some health issues. As suggested by Ralph J. Di Clement (2002). While planning a health promotion program, it is important to select the attitude or attitudes that the promotion is intended to change and to measure each attitude separately to determine the success of the program, Keeping in view all of the above arguments and evaluations, it is seen that people's attitude towards health promotion is biased and somewhat negative, as each of them are individuals with varying degrees of thought processes. The affects of their surroundings is visible in their behavior, which then tends to change the thinking process. People are careless about their health; they tend to go on with their hazardous habits as they are not able to generate positive or constructive cognition. Health promotion programs could focus on helping the individual to tackle his problems gradually, rather than attacking him with warnings and threats. People know the dangers involved; they don't have to be reminded about it. They have to be persuaded to think about how their health habits are influencing the people around them. Attitude can be changed if the direction of thought is changed. Once, an individual has a clear concept of his thoughts, his attitude would respond to his thoughts. The trick here lies in how to invoke and motivate such positive thoughts. The two social psychology theories, that is cognitive dissonance and elaboration models were discussed. Both these concepts are promising theories for future experiments and research based on health issues. The theories mainly focus on the thinking pattern of the individual. CDT implies on reducing dissonance, whereas ELM implies on the idea of strong messages that would persuade the receiver to think about his situation and actions. Analyzing all these situations, the conclusion can be drawn that in order to attract people towards health promotion programs, their attitude has to be changed first. This is only possible if the thought process is given positive and clear concepts. Once, this step is achieved, people would themselves be motivated to improve their health and social life. BIBLOGRAPHY Lawrence, W.Green., & Marshall, W. Kreuter. (1999). An Educational and Ecological Approach (third edition). Mountain View, California: Mayfield Publishing Company. David, G. Myers.(1993). Social Psychology. McGraw-Hill. Floyd, Henry Allport (1967). Social Psychology. University of Michigan: Johnson Reprint Corp Social Psychology Keith ,Tones,& Sylvia ,Tilford.(2001). 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