101614 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Smoking Cessation, Cardiovascular Disease, Tooth Brushing
Document Summary
Health psychologists conduct research to identify behaviors and experiences that promote health, give rise to illness, and in uence the effectiveness of health care. They also recommend ways to improve health care policy. Health psychologists have worked on developing ways to reduce smoking and improve daily nutrition in order to promote health and prevent illness. They have also studied the association between illness and individual characteristics. For example, health psychology has found a relation between the personality characteristics of thrill seeking, impulsiveness, hostility/anger, emotional instability, and depression, on one hand, and high-risk driving, on the other. Health psychology is also concerned with contextual factors, including economic, cultural, community, social, and lifestyle factors that in uence health. The biopsychosocial society can help in understanding the relation between contextual factors and biology in affecting health. Some research suggests that seductive advertising also contributes to psychological dependency on tobacco, although other research has found no relationship between media exposure and smoking in youth.
