Chapter 8 Changing motivation
8
CHAPTER PLAN
In Chapter 7 we studied cognitions that have been found to differentiate between
people who do and do not perform health behaviours. In this chapter we focus on
interventions designed to change cognitions in order to promote health-related
behaviours.
Learning about a health risk can change people’s attitudes, intentions and behaviour.
Therefore, provision of accessible and easily understood information is an important
part of health promotion. Information is evaluated by the receiver and if it is judged
to be mistaken, not personally relevant or implying difficult or costly actions it may
be ignored. Consequently, health promoters also need to persuade individuals and
groups to take health-promoting action. Successful persuasion depends on anticipating
how recipients will perceive and respond to the persuasive attempt. Successful
persuasion is likely to result in attitude change and (as we saw in Chapter 7) attitudes
provide an important foundation for the motivation to change one’s behaviour.
However, when people feel they cannot make a change they are unlikely to pursue
it. Consequently, ensuring high perceived control and self-efficacy is crucial to
maintenance of motivation and the translation of intentions into action. In this chapter
we will consider how motivation can be bolstered and changed in five sections: (1)
providing information; (2) persuading others; (3) changing attitudes; (4) enhancing self-
efficacy; and (5) from motivation to behaviour change.When you have completed this chapter you should be able to:1 Describe how information and advice should be presented to maximize its
impact on health-related motivation and action.
2 Explain how social influence techniques can be applied to maximize the impact
of health-promotion advice on recipients’ motivation, in mass media, one-to-one
and group communication.LEARNING OUTCOMES