View article

Roughly half of all causes of mortality in the United States are tied to social and behavioral variables including smoking, alcohol use, diet and sedentary lifestyle (Institute of Medicine, 2000). Because of this, health promotion campaigns and research are typically designed to induce positive change in health-related behaviors. For example, a media campaign might attempt to convince people to use their seatbelts or to stop smoking. However, studies of the effectiveness of media and direct interventions have provided inconsistent results. In particular, efforts in critical areas such as drug and alcohol abuse and AIDS prevention have sometimes proven to be disappointing in terms of concrete successes. This challenge has led to a number of responses. Notably, there is a growing awareness of the importance of health promotion programs that establish sustained behavioral change, as distinct from merely impacting initiation of behavior change (Rothman, 2000). For example, between 2003 and 2007 the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research awarded $53.8 million to support research investigating,“Maintenance of Long-Term Behavioral Change,”(Solomon, 2005). To understand why certain interventions with high face validity fail to provide sustained behavioral change, health promotion researchers and practitioners have sought insight from basic research on influence processes. In line with this view, funding agencies have identified the importance of uncovering the mechanisms underlying cause-effect relationships between specific intervention components and outcomes.

Experimental research has shown that attitudes represent …