72 STRESS AND HEALTH
What are theories and models? Why do we need them in health
(and occupational health) psychology?Theories are descriptions of how things, or people, are constructed and how they
behave. Science is the process of generating theories and testing their capacity to
account for observations of events. As scientists, psychologists use theory in their
efforts to describe, explain, predict and change cognition, emotion and behaviour.
In psychology, theory includes descriptions and categorizations that allow us to
distinguish between types of people, for example in relation to cognition or
personality and between types of social situation, for example in terms of work
demands or role relations. Identifying correlations between characterizations of
people (e.g. personality) or jobs (e.g. work demands) and health or health-related
outcomes is the first step in theory development, which next proceeds to
articulating processes that explain correlations. These causal explanations describe
sequences of interconnected mechanisms underlying psychological responses and
behavioural patterns. Once such processes are understood we can predict
relationships between theorized variables and intervene to change such processes
(Abraham, 2004). For example, see the development of psychological processes
linking personality to coronary heart disease (as described in Chapter 6). Thus,
developing and testing theory helps us explain why people behave differently and
thereby facilitates prediction of the behaviour of particular types of people or people
in particular roles and/or situations (Abraham, 2004).
The terms ‘framework’, ‘model’ and ‘theory’ are often used interchangeably in
psychology and the distinctions are not clear-cut. However, generally speaking, a
framework is a loose set of constructs that does not clearly specify linking
mechanisms. Models may provide clearer links between constructs but theories
should ideally specify interconnecting causal mechanisms, which can be
experimentally tested (see our discussion of testing social cognition models in
Chapter 7).
In research in the area of occupational health psychology, many theoretical
constructions are more accurately described by the term ‘model’ than ‘theory’
and we still have few theories to help us understand the processes whereby work
stressors may damage health. Better theories would help us to design more
effective interventions. Arguably, theoretical development is more advanced
in other areas of health psychology such as predicting and changing motivation
and health behaviour (see, e.g. Chapters 7–9).FOCUS 4.1