In one line: Behavioural change is a lasting change in what a person does, produced by learning.
A woman who has smoked for twenty years gives up. Nothing in her genes has altered. What has changed is a behaviour that was learned, and has now been unlearned.
Behavioural change asks how a behaviour is acquired, what keeps it going, and what it takes to replace it.
Remember: To change a behaviour, find out what is keeping it going.
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Key idea: The routes by which a behaviour was learned are the routes by which it can be changed.
How behaviour is learned and changed
Learning by association
Two things that occur together become linked (classical conditioning).
She always smoked with her morning coffee. Now coffee alone brings on the urge.
Habit formation
An action repeated in the same setting becomes automatic.
Her hand reaches for the packet as she starts the car, before she has decided anything.
Learning from consequences
Behaviour followed by a reward is repeated (operant conditioning).
Each cigarette brought quick relief, so smoking was rewarded many times a day. Using rewards deliberately to change behaviour is behaviour modification.
Association · Habit · Consequences
Giving up means working on all three. She changes the cue (tea, not coffee), breaks the routine (the packet is no longer in the car), and arranges a new reward (the money saved goes into a jar she can see).
Exam tip: Say what maintains a behaviour before saying how to change it.
The strategy should follow from the explanation.
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Key idea: People resist change, even change they want. The reasons are called barriers to change.
Four barriers to change
Cues everywhere
The settings linked with the old behaviour are still there.
The coffee, the car and the break at work each bring the urge back.
Immediate against delayed
The old behaviour is rewarded within seconds. The benefit of stopping lies years ahead and cannot be seen.
The social setting
Friends who smoke offer cigarettes, and the group's shared break is lost.
A behaviour that belongs to a group is defended by the group.
Belief in one's own ability
A person who expects to fail reads one lapse as proof and gives up.
Confidence that one can carry out the change is called self-efficacy.
Cues · Timing of reward · Social setting · Belief
This is why information seldom changes behaviour. Every smoker has read the warning on the packet. Knowledge removes none of the four barriers.
Watch out: A lapse is part of most successful change.
Many people who give up for good have tried several times before.
Key idea: Strategies for change are aimed at different people, at different moments, and at different scales.
Three kinds of strategy
Promotion
Makes a healthy behaviour easier and more attractive for a whole population.
Smoke-free public places make not smoking the normal thing to do.
Prevention
Acts before the problem exists, often with those most at risk.
School programmes that practise refusing a cigarette.
Intervention
Treats people who already have the problem.
A course that combines nicotine patches with weekly support.
Promotion · Prevention · Intervention
Environmental determinism
- Behaviour is the product of cues and rewards
- Change the surroundings and behaviour follows
- Supported by: smoking falls when prices rise
Agency
- People set goals and act on them
- They can rearrange their own surroundings
- Supported by: many people give up with no help at all
Three levels: A strategy can work with an individual, across a community (local), or through laws and international agreements (global).
Its effectiveness has to be judged at the level it was aimed at.
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How this is asked: On Paper 1, one 15-mark essay links a concept to a context, often as a claim. Change fits the context of health and well-being, where the question is how behaviour can be changed.
Details of studies are not assessed. The quality of the argument is.
The essay pattern
- State a position on the claim.
- Explain what keeps the behaviour going.
- Set the claim against the barriers to change.
- Compare strategies that inform with strategies that alter cues and rewards.
- Conclude on what makes change likely, and lasting.
The trap: change as a single event: Giving up for a week is not yet behavioural change.
Ask whether the change was kept up, and what happened after a lapse.
One claim in the psychology of health and well-being is that people who know a behaviour is unhealthy will change it. Discuss this claim with reference to change.
Model answer plan
See the answer broken into clear points, with guidance on how each point earns marks.