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Course goals, evaluations, some key links. |
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8/24/09 |
Introductions, student goals, examples of health behavior models. | |
8/31/09 |
Overview of Health behavior & behavioral medicine concepts | |
9/7/09 |
Applications of personality theory to health & health behavior
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9/14/09 |
Basic attitude theory, self-regulation | |
9/21/09 |
Self-regulation, Self-Efficacy and the Health Belief model. | |
9/28/09 |
General Social-Cognitive / Affective Models | |
10/5/09 |
Judgments of vulnerability & risk estimation. | |
10/12/09 |
Self-awareness,
"Automaticity", and Cognitive Escape.
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10/19/09 |
Dual systems theories: affect and cognition | |
10/28/09 |
Overview of Psychoimmunology: affect, coping and health. | |
11/2/09 |
Psychoimmunology 2: Effects and interventions | |
11/9/09 |
Socio-economic Status and Health. | |
11/16/09 |
Minority group stress, SES, Race and Health. | |
11/23/09 |
Policy, Economic and Political Influences on Health
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11/30/09 |
Spirituality, Happiness, Mindfulness, Well-Being and Health | |
Week 16 |
12/7/09 |
Overview, discussion of student research directions & papers |
Updated 11 / 11 / 09
Popular press articles of the week: Are Fat people unfairly discriminated against? Is fat just another cultural group rather than a "problem" that needs to be solved? Should diversity also include weight? Click for an article from the Tribune: What do women want? Can evolutionary biology provide an answer? Click here and here for links to some interesting Newsweek articles. Funding guide for Graduate Student research Here |
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| Various interesting papers or resources... | ![]() |
Click here for a out of the blue discussion of evolution, consciousness & behavior.![]() |
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| Click image for an excellent overview of female sexuality (not necessarily risky sex...) from the NYT Sunday Magazine. |
| Overview |
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Social Basis of Health Behavior will address theory and data from clinical & social psychology, public health, economics and epistemology addressing health- or prevention-related behavior, stress and coping, design and evaluation of behavioral interventions, and community or policy-level issues. We will only briefly address behavioral medicine , although we will review the immune system and psycho-immunology.
In previous years I required brief (1 -2 Pp.) reaction papers each week discussing the readings. However, I am considering having students comment on the Health Blog each week instead: we will discuss that the first day of class. The major evaluation is a PHS-style grant proposal, presenting an empirically testable model of a health behavior or intervention. Students are strongly advised to articulate this project with their other (MA, Prelim, Ph.D.) work. The target behaviors & theories we address will be guided by student (and instructor!) interests. The Health Blog is here (http://healthuicpsych.blogspot.com/). I plan to use in for class, so check it out. The paper outline is here. A powerpoint presentation demonstrating how to register for the course Wiki is here. |
| Week 1 |
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Introductions, student goals and projects, overall framework of Health Psychology This first week we will spend discussing the course and articulating student goals. So, for your "reaction" paper please describe your interests in Health Behavior, particularly vis-a-vis theories or bodies of empirical work you are particularly interested in. I will try to adjust the schedule to meet everyone's interests. To kick off we will have readings at two extremes, just to illustrate the range of issues we will address and to get you all thinking. The first is on social networks and obesity (the paper that has been all over the news recently), and two others taking much more of a neurobiological look at behavior, one a review of "Social neuroscience" and another on histocompatability, mating and romantic faithfulness (and you thought love was an emotion...). Primary Readings Christakis, N. A., & Fowler, J. H. (2007). The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years. N Engl J Med, 357(4), 370-379. Link Barabasi, A.-L. (2007). Network Medicine -- From Obesity to the "Diseasome". N Engl J Med, 357(4), 404-407. Link Cacioppo, J. T., Amaral, D. G., Blanchard, J. J., Cameron, J. L., Sue Carter, C., Crews, D., et al. (2007). Social Neuroscience: Progress and Implications for Mental Health. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2(2), 99-123. Link Garver-Apgar, C. E., Gangestad, S. W., Thornhill, R., Miller, R. D., & Olp, J. J. (2006). Major Histocompatibility Complex Alleles, Sexual Responsivity, and Unfaithfulness in Romantic Couples. Psychological Science, 17(10), 830-835. Link
Christakis, N. A., & Fowler, J. H. (2008). The Collective Dynamics of Smoking in a Large Social Network. N Engl J Med, 358(21), 2249-2258. Link Fowler, J. H., & Christakis, N. A. (2008). Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study. British Medical Journal, 337(dec04_2), a2338-a2347. Link Click here for comments and rebuttals on this line of research Click here for an overview of Christakis & Folwer's work from the NYT. |
| Week 2 |
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Overview of Health behavior & behavioral medicine concepts These
readings are a little dated but give good overviews of core concepts
and models. We will do more "big picture" stuff as we
go along, particularly on the Psychosocial side. The Krantz article
is limited to CHD, but gives a more recent look at core constructs.
Primary readings
House, J.S., Landis, K.R., & Umberson, D (1988). Social relationships and health. Science, 241, 540-545. Link Baum, A. & Posluszny, D.M. (1999). Health Psychology: Mapping Biobehavioral Contributions to Health and Illness. Annual Review of Psychology, 50, 137-163. Link Krantz, D. S., & McCeney, M. K. (2002). Effects Of Psychological And Social Factors On Organic Disease: A Critical Assessment of Research on Coronary Heart Disease. Annual Review of Psychology, 53(1), 341-369. Link Bonus Reading Gladwell, M. The Tipping Point. New Yorker. Link |
| Week 3 |
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Basics of personality theory and applications to health and health behavior Class slides are here, notes are here. Warm-up reading Are kids inherently riskier than adults? Is it their brain? Or is that a myth? Click image to read an interesting NYT op-ed piece.Primary readings Smith, T. W., & MacKenzie, J. (2006). Personality and Risk of Physical Illness. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 2(1), 435-467. Link Bonus Readings |
| Week 4 |
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Basic attitude theory, self-regulation There are some more recent attitude reviews than those I have included, but Ajzen's seems most straightforward, and I am not sure the field has changed that much in the past few years. Ajzen wrote the granddaddy of attitude theories - the theory of reasoned action - with Marty Fishbein at UIUC. We will spend a lot of time later on more sophisticated cognitive theories from Social Psychology, but this is a good review. I am also including a bonus paper on attitude change and persuasion by Wendy Wood. To some extent that is the real bottom line for us, but I don't want to load you up with too many readings. Get to it if you can, however. Lecture notes are here Warm-up Video We have had a request for video content in the course. I am not sure what that really should consist of, but I did find a very informative video clip on attitudes: click to image to be enlightened. Bonus Reading Wood, W. (2000). Attitude Change: Persuasion and Social Influence. Annual Review of Psychology, 51(1), 539-570. Link Politics, fear mongering, and attitudes toward vaccines |
| Week 5 |
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More on self-regulation, plus Self-Efficacy and the Health Belief model.
PowerPoint notes are here Warm-up reading
Primary readings Myrseth, K., & Fishbach, A. (2009). Self-Control: A Function of Knowing When and How to Exercise Restraint. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18(4), 247-252. Link Bonus Reading Bandura has a concise overview of his model-of-all-of-behavior on his web site. |
| Week 6 |
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General Social-Cognitive / Affective Models: PowerPoint notes are here Introductory Social Cognition Classic Markus, H. (1977). Self-schemata and processing information about the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(2), 63-78. Link Bonus Readings Ajzen, I., & Fishbein, M. (2004). Questions Raised by a Reasoned Action Approach: Comment on Ogden (2003). Health Psychology, 23(4), 431-434. Link Sturges, J.W. & Rogers, R.W. (1996). Preventive health psychology from a developmental perspective: An extension of protection motivation theory. Health Psychology, 15(3), 158-166. Link Important reference readings |
| Week 7 |
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Judgments of vulnerability: Warm up NPR report Segerstrom, S. C., Taylor, S. E., Kemeny, M. E., & Fahey, J. L. (1998). Optimism is associated with mood, coping and immune change in response to stress. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 74(6), 1646-1655. Link Bonus Readings Smith, T. W., Pope, M. K., Rhodewalt, F., & Poulton, J. L. (1989). Optimism, neuroticism, coping, and symptom reports: An alternative interpretation of the Life Orientation Test. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 56(4), 640-648. Link Click the image for a New York Times / Science Times |
| Week 8 |
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Self-awareness, "Automaticity", and Cognitive Escape. PowerPoint notes are here Warm-up reading Does stress make us stupid? Brain changes in response to stress make make us less able to change our ineffective coping behaviors. Click the image for a recent overview from the NYT.Bonus Reading |
Some out-of-the-blue bonus readings on evolutionary perspectives. This gets even worse in an evolutionary frame, where the core assumption is that many key behaviors -- mate selection, social organization, eating behaviors are governed by naturally selected brain mechanisms that operate wholly outside of conscious awareness. This assumption has been important to those who stress the continuity of humans and other primates, and therefore assign no special status to the distinctive human characteristics of reflexive consciousness and verbal behavior. Bering & Shackelford counter this trend with interesting discussion of the possible role of human consciousness as a causal factor in evolution. Take a look at this if you need some reassurance that mind may still be important. I am including an Annual Review paper by Caporael that provides a general overview of evolutionary theories applied to Psychology, FYI. In applying evolutionary theories more directly to health I am including a Darwinian view of stress reactions I found very interesting by Korte. He argues that most species divide into Hawks and Doves, each of which represents a coherent approach to coping with adversity (environmental pressure, feeding
), and each of which has distinctive consequences for stress responses and physical health. This gets a little far afield from our discussion of social cognition (it reviews animal research and falls into the unconscious evolutionary mechanism camp), but is a very interesting read on possibly naturally selected stress responses. |
| Week 9 |
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Dual systems theories: Affect and cognition As I read the "dual systems" literature it becomes clear that a lot of this theorizing is old wine in new bottles. Carver, in the second paper, makes this clear in harkening back to the psychoanalysts (the "ego psychology" school) for the origins of this view. From a more modern perspective, a lot of this thought overlaps with the "controlled" versus "automatic" distinction in perception and cognition. The difference is that here affect weighs heavily in the "automatic" side, rather than, e.g., highly accessible or automatic thoughts. The Hoffman et al. paper is a very good overview, so spend time on that. Carver attempts a historical and highly integrative review, with more emphasis on stable individual differences in impulsivity or constraint. The Gailliot papers address the very interesting finding that cognitive control or restraint may be a limited resource: after exercising self-regulation on one task people are generally less able to self-regulate on a subsequent task. This is consistent with the larger view that cognitive control is tenuous at best ("...a reed blown in the wind of the emotions." to quote Freud). The first paper reports some relatively minor effects, but does show the effect on actual sexual behavior in the lab (!). The second paper attributes these effects to blood glucose levels, suggesting a relatively straightforward mechanism. The bonus podcast is excellent - make time for it if you can. They review these issues in a very entertaining and informative fashion. Visit for RadioLab site for a variety of really good shows. Finally, you clinical students will be interested in the Carver bonus paper: he ties this process into seritonin levels, and further into depression and aggression. Primary readings Hofmann, W., Friese, M., & Strack, F. (2009). Impulse and Self-Control From a Dual-Systems Perspective. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(2), 162-176. Link Carver, C. S. (2005). Impulse and Constraint: Perspectives From Personality Psychology, Convergence With Theory in Other Areas, and Potential for Integration. Personality & Social Psychology Review (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), 9(4), 312-333. Link Gailliot, M. T., & Baumeister, R. F. (2007). Self-regulation and sexual restraint: Dispositionally and temporarily poor self-regulatory abilities contribute to failures at restraining sexual behavior. [Article]. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(2), 173-186. Link Gailliot, M. T., Baumeister, R. F., DeWall, C. N., Maner, J. K., Plant, E. A., Tice, D. M., et al. (2007). Self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source: Willpower is more than a metaphor. [Article]. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(2), 325-336. Link Bonus PodCast Click here to go to the RadioLab site for a great radio show on choice, decision making, and the times when affect overwhelms cognition. From the producers: ChoiceWe turn up the volume on the voices in our heads and try to make sense of the babble. On a journey around the country to understand how emotion and logic interact to guide us through our options, we ponder how we get through the million choices and decisions we make every day. Forget free will, some important decisions could come down to a steaming cup of coffee.Bonus Reading Carver, C. S., Johnson, S. L., & Joormann, J. (2008). Serotonergic Function, Two-Mode Models of Self-Regulation, and Vulnerability to Depression: What Depression Has in Common With Impulsive Aggression. [Review]. Psychological Bulletin, 134(6), 912-943. Link For the truncated version of this paper, see: Strack F, Deutsch R. Reflective and impulsive determinants of social behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Review. 2004;8(3):220-247. |
| Week 10 |
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Psychoimmunology. Suinn, R. M. (2001). The terrible twos--anger and anxiety: Hazardous to your health. American Psychologist, 56(1), 27-36. Link Bonus Readings Everything you needed to know about stress, cytokines, illness behavior and depression: Very interesting evolutionary / ecological perspective on immune function: |
| Week 11 |
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Psychoimmunology 2 Bonus Readings Smyth, J. M. (1998). Written emotional expression: Effect sizes, outcome types, and moderating variables. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 66(1), 174-184. Link Simmons, D. A., & Broderick, P. A. (2005). Cytokines, stressors, and clinical depression: augmented adaptation responses underlie depression pathogenesis. Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry, 29(5), 793-807. Link More Psychosocial-oriented Readings in Psychoimmunology |
| Week 12 |
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Socio-economic Status and Health. Bonus readings
Brief article outlining an informative model of how stress, behavior and immune function contribute to preterm birth (with a focus on SES and race): |
| Week 13 |
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Culture, stress, resources & Health. We then have a piece by Rosmond on the Metabolic Syndrome, a key construct in the pathways linking stress and health. This paper does a nice (brief!) job summarizing the general construct of stress, the cluster of poor health outcomes that characterized the metabolic syndrome (high blood pressure, antipose fat, high glucose levels...), and its effects on cardiac health. Nancy Krieger provides a concise discussion of conceptual and methodological questions in addressing the concept of "Race" and health. The LaVeist paper is also nice and short, here describing methodological / conceptual issues in assessing social class.
Primary readings Rosmond, R. (2005). Role of stress in the pathogenesis of the metabolic syndrome. Psychoneuroendocrinology 30(1): 1-10. Link Krieger, N. (2003). "Does racism harm health? Did child abuse exist before 1962? On explicit questions, critical science, and current controversies: An ecosocial perspective." American Journal of Public Health 93(2): 194-199. Link Bonus Readings The Hamilton et al. paper is from a special issue of Jr. Counseling Psychology on gay/lesbian issues in mental health. Take a look at that for some other very good papers on this general topic: Journal of Counseling Psychology, Volume 56, Issue 1, 2009, here.
Bloche, M. G. (2004). Health Care Disparities Science, Politics, and Race. New England Journal of Medicine, 350, 1568-1570. Link Steinbrook, R. (2004). Disparities in Health Care From Politics to Policy. New England Journal of Medicine, 350, 1486-1488. Link |
| Week 14 |
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Policy, Economic and Political Influences on Health Then a set of three: a short NYT article discusses a paper by Chou and Gross addressing the economics of smoking and weight. They argue that obesity rates have gone up as smoking has become more expensive and difficult (due to restrictive regulation): basically, as public health regulation lessened one key health threat it exacerbated another in the process. Gruber disagrees: I could not find his paper directly addressing Grossmans analysis of the population trend data, so I enclosed another piece of his that provides a larger view of tobacco regulation.
Warm-up readings Click here for a very recent piece by the Chicago Tribune describing the nutritinally awful breakfast program administered to kids in Chicago Public Schools. Bonus Readings Gruber, J. (2002). The economics of tobacco regulation. Health Affairs, 21(2), 146-162. Link. Fat Stigma: The perception that you are (too) fat may cause health problems beyond the actual physical effects of weight... |
| Week 15 | |
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Spirituality, Happiness, Mindfulness, Well-Being and Health
Warm-up reading See also a Chicago Tribune discussion of whether Christian Science prayer should be covered as "treatments" in any new health care bill here. Primary readings Powell, L. H., Shahabi, L., & Thoresen, C. E. (2003). Religion and spirituality: Linkages to physical health. American Psychologist, 58(1), 36-52. Link. Bonus Readings |