Health Behavior Theory, Part I

I exist in a world that often speaks of health behavior theory. And, not to condense a discipline and a core area of study for public health, but many center the belief that people believe in what they perceive to be truthful. And that our behaviors originate with our beliefs.

I think there is truth to this. We believe something. We act in accordance with that belief. That makes sense, in some cases.

But something that I have come to believe and think should be rigorously explored scientifically is that there is a substantial contribution of what we want to believe that informs our behaviors.

We don’t necessarily believe in what is factually true because either it is factually true or we have been convinced that it is true. Sometimes our belief in a “truth” is because we want it to be true.

One way or another, for us, it is what we rely upon. It makes our conditions easier to live with. It justifies actions we are already taking that make us feel morally corrupted. It subdues feelings of anxiety, guilt, fear, confusion, meaninglessness, and injustice.

If you feel guilty about your behavior toward those who you have essentially maniupulated for profit, you might develop an ideology that somehow your actions are justified. Economically speaking, you cannot pay your employees more money, or give them more benefits, because by doing so you should increase their comfort to a level that they would become entited and lazy and no longer motivated to work hard. Is that true? Do people, when appropriately compensated and living a comfortable and safe life lose all interest in their work? No. But, what a convenient belief to hold. Belief follows behavior. Behavior followed personal desire and interest: profit.

What do people want? What do they do to get what they want? And, what do they then believe in order to make it all okay?

If you feel like you deserve the same access to employment, financial security, romantic partnership, housing, respect, and social status that you believe your father and grandfather had, and you don’t want to work for it, you might develop a belief that you are actually owed those things by divine right of your race and gender. Is that true? No. But, again, what a convenient belief to have. The belief that you should get exactly what you want at the expense of others. Weak, insecure, fearful, entitled young men become fascists.

If you’re enslaving a group of people arbitrarily because they didn’t have advanced weapons when you began landing your ships where they lived (and so through coercion, manipulation, and threat of violence they were forced to acquiesce) and then you’ve essentially just been abusing and violently oppressing them for generations, it’s easier to develop a belief that somehow there are special divine gifts owed to you by origin of your blood. Actually, you’re not a violent, selfish monster. Your race is just superior. Theirs is inferior. In fact, yours is destined to conquer theirs and oddly enough, being enslaved is good for them and certainly better for them than their own attempts at autonomy and self-governance. You’re actually doing humanity a great service.

Let’s bring it back to health behavior.

If you want to eat a large amount of meat, are you going to stop because some scientists said that large intakes of red meat are related to cancer, cardiovascular disease, heart disease, and a bunch of other health complications? No. Why? Because you don’t want to. You want to believe something that is going to justify your doing whatever you want anyway: i.e. eating large amounts of red meat. So, instead, you adopt a belief that actually, our ancestors consumed a massive amount of red meat (I’ve critiqued this before), red meat actually has protective health effects, and you’ll actually be stronger, more manly, and live longer if you eat nothing but red meat. Plants are actually the thing that will kill you because they’re full of chemicals that destroy your hormones.

Convenient beliefs to develop, huh?

Our behaviors are not derivatives of a collection of our beliefs.

Rather, I think that our beliefs arise for our need to justify our behaviors.

We make the choices that we make and we behave how we behave, not because we are reacting to the truth or what we recognize as the truth, but because we want that version of truth to be real.

What truths do you want to be real? What behaviors do you want to justify?

This isn’t the last I will write about this. I find this deeply fascinating.