Feeling bad about progress does not lead people want to change their health behaviour

Abstract

The findings have implications for interventions designed to promote changes in health behaviour, as well as theoretical frameworks for understanding self-regulation.

Emotion, health decision making, and health behaviour

“…In accordance with Van Cappellen et al (2017), Cameron and colleagues show that inducing positive affect leads to greater engagement in physical activity. Also consistent with Van Cappellen and colleagues, Reynolds et al (2017) demonstrate that while failing to make progress towards health goals leads to predictable negative affective responses, positive affective responses about making progress towards health goals is more motivational for facilitating health behaviour intentions. And, consistent with recommendations for examining the role of emotions in relation to risk perceptions (Carpenter & Niedenthal, 2017;Kiviniemi et al, 2017), Scherer et al (2017) demonstrate that affective evaluations, anxiety, risks and benefits all uniquely predict medical test preference in the context of an experiment to interrogate how different types of information and recommendations influence evaluations of medical tests.…”

“…Moreover, although these papers are organised along the continuum as though it were linear, it is important for future work to circle back to the beginning of the translational continuum, back-translating mechanistic knowledge derived from intervention studies (e.g. Cameron et al, 2017;Evans et al, 2017;Mahler, 2017;Reynolds et al, 2017) to improve theories and use-inspired basic work on goal pursuit, risk perceptions, positive affect and social norms. This recommendation for basic-to-applied-to-basic translation is consistent with parallel recommendations for affective science and health behaviour change (Rhodes et al, 2017), as well as emerging recommendations for behavioural science and health research (Czajkowski et al, 2016;Glasgow, 2008;Sussman et al, 2006; see also: https://obssr.od.nih.gov/about-us/strategic-plan/).…”

“…Finally, Cameron, Bertenshaw, and Sheeran (2017), Reynolds, Webb, Benn, Chang, and Sheeran (2017) and Scherer et al, 2017) all demonstrate how affective theories can be leveraged to develop efficacious interventions for health behaviours. In accordance with Van Cappellen et al (2017), Cameron and colleagues show that inducing positive affect leads to greater engagement in physical activity.…”

“…Future work would benefit from integrating social neuroscience into work disentangling affective influences on health decisions and behaviour. For example, social neuroscience theory and approaches may shed light on why rumination does not interfere with sleep in high-stress populations (Felder et al, 2017), why specific emotions are less important than general feelings in predicting health behaviour (Kiviniemi, 2017), or what mechanisms underlie the effect of feeling good about progress on intentions to change health behaviours (Reynolds et al, 2017).…”

Self‐regulatory consequences of observing others making goal progress: A longitudinal field study in weight loss groups

“…Observing others make progress Past theory and research suggests that good progress (i.e., progress that is faster than expected or required) can lead people to reduce effort (Carver & Scheier, 1982;Louro, Pieters, & Zeelenberg, 2007), although this may depend on the current state of goal progress (Louro et al, 2007;Reynolds, Webb, Benn, Chang, & Sheeran, 2018). For example, research on 'coasting' suggests that people will reduce effort towards a focal goal when they feel that they have made progress (Fulford, Johnson, Llabre, & Carver, 2010;Louro et al, 2007).…”