Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Behavior Change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Behavior Change. Show all posts

Monday, July 22, 2019

Understanding the process of moralization: How eating meat becomes a moral issue

Feinberg, M., Kovacheff, C., Teper, R., & Inbar, Y. (2019).
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(1), 50-72.

Abstract

A large literature demonstrates that moral convictions guide many of our thoughts, behaviors, and social interactions. Yet, we know little about how these moral convictions come to exist. In the present research we explore moralization—the process by which something that was morally neutral takes on moral properties—examining what factors facilitate and deter it. In 3 longitudinal studies participants were presented with morally evocative stimuli about why eating meat should be viewed as a moral issue. Study 1 tracked students over a semester as they took a university course that highlighted the suffering animals endure because of human meat consumption. In Studies 2 and 3 participants took part in a mini-course we developed which presented evocative videos aimed at inducing moralization. In all 3 studies, we assessed participants’ beliefs, attitudes, emotions, and cognitions at multiple time points to track moral changes and potential factors responsible for such changes. A variety of factors, both cognitive and affective, predicted participants’ moralization or lack thereof. Model testing further pointed to two primary conduits of moralization: the experience of moral emotions (e.g., disgust, guilt) felt when contemplating the issue, and moral piggybacking (connecting the issue at hand with one’s existing fundamental moral principles). Moreover, we found individual differences, such as how much one holds their morality as central to their identity, also predicted the moralization process. We discuss the broad theoretical and applied implications of our results.

A pdf can be viewed here.

Friday, March 29, 2019

The history and future of digital health in the field of behavioral medicine

Danielle Arigo, Danielle E. Jake-Schoffman, Kathleen Wolin, Ellen Beckjord, & Eric B. Hekler
J Behav Med (2019) 42: 67.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-018-9966-z

Abstract

Since its earliest days, the field of behavioral medicine has leveraged technology to increase the reach and effectiveness of its interventions. Here, we highlight key areas of opportunity and recommend next steps to further advance intervention development, evaluation, and commercialization with a focus on three technologies: mobile applications (apps), social media, and wearable devices. Ultimately, we argue that future of digital health behavioral science research lies in finding ways to advance more robust academic-industry partnerships. These include academics consciously working towards preparing and training the work force of the twenty first century for digital health, actively working towards advancing methods that can balance the needs for efficiency in industry with the desire for rigor and reproducibility in academia, and the need to advance common practices and procedures that support more ethical practices for promoting healthy behavior.

Here is a portion of the Summary

An unknown landscape of privacy and data security

Another relatively new set of challenges centers around the issues of privacy and data security presented by digital health tools. First, some commercially available technologies that were originally produced for purposes other than promoting healthy behavior (e.g., social media) are now being used to study health behavior and deliver interventions. This poses a variety of potential privacy issues depending on the privacy settings used, including the fact that data from non-participants may inadvertently be viewed and collected, and their rights should also be considered as part of study procedures (Arigo et al., 2018).  Privacy may be of particular concern as apps begin to incorporate additional smartphone technologies such as GPS location tracking and cameras (Nebeker et al., 2015).  Second, for commercial products that were originally designed for health behavior change (e.g., apps), researchers need to carefully read and understand the associated privacy and security agreements, be sure that participants understand these agreements, and include a summary of this information in their applications to ethics review boards.

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

The Hype of Virtual Medicine

Ezekiel J. Emanuel
The Wall Street Journal
Originally posted Nov. 10, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

But none of this will have much of an effect on the big and unsolved challenge for American medicine: how to change the behavior of patients. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fully 86% of all health care spending in the U.S. is for patients with chronic illness—emphysema, arthritis and the like. How are we to make real inroads against these problems? Patients must do far more to monitor their diseases, take their medications consistently and engage with their primary-care physicians and nurses. In the longer term, we need to lower the number of Americans who suffer from these diseases by getting them to change their habits and eat healthier diets, exercise more and avoid smoking.

There is no reason to think that virtual medicine will succeed in inducing most patients to cooperate more with their own care, no matter how ingenious the latest gizmos. Many studies that have tried some high-tech intervention to improve patients’ health have failed.

Consider the problem of patients who do not take their medication properly, leading to higher rates of complications, hospitalization and even mortality. Researchers at Harvard, in collaboration with CVS, published a study in JAMA Internal Medicine in May comparing different low-cost devices for encouraging patients to take their medication as prescribed. The more than 50,000 participants were randomly assigned to one of three options: high-tech pill bottles with digital timer caps, pillboxes with daily compartments or standard plastic pillboxes. The high-tech pill bottles did nothing to increase compliance.

Other efforts have produced similar failures.

The article is here.

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Good News! You're Not an Automaton

By Cass R. Sunstein
Bloomberg View
Originally published March 30, 2016

A good nudge is like a GPS device: A small, low-cost intervention that tells you how to get where you want to go -- and if you don’t like what it says, you're free to ignore it. But when, exactly, will people do that? A new study sheds important light on that question, by showing the clear limits of nudging. Improbably, this research is also good news: It shows that when people feel strongly, it’s not easy to influence them to make choices that they won’t like.

The focus of this new research, as with much recent work on behavioral science, is on what people eat. Numerous studies suggest that if healthy foods are made more visible or convenient to find, more people will choose them. We tend to make purchasing decisions quickly and automatically; if certain foods or drinks -- snickers bars, apples, orange juice -- are easy to see and grab, consumption will jump.

The article is here.

Note: The podcast on nudge theory and how it applies to psychotherapy can be found here.