A perspective on Health Behavior Theory
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.
But there is an aspect, I think substantially so, of what we want to believe that informs our beliefs.
We don’t believe in what is true because either it is true or we have been convinced that it is true, but 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.
If we’re guilty about our behavior toward those who have we have essentially maniupulated for profit, you develop an ideology that somehow your actions are justified.
If you feel like you don’t matter in the world and that makes you angry and resentful, then you can develop an ideology that you are part of genetic hierarchy and actually divinely special, even though others cannot recognize it. Small, weak, insecure, fearful, angry young people become fascists.
If you’re enslaving a group of people arbitrarily because they didn’t have advanced weapons and so they had no choice, and you’ve essentially just been abusing and violently oppressing them for generations, it’s easier to develop an ideology that somewhere there are special divine gifts by origin of blood if you’re white and you’re destined and called upon to rule the world.
Those are just the extreme examples. But they happed on a smaller scale too.
If you are afraid of exposure, we convince ourselves that exposure actually is threatening. There is a reason to be scared.
We even believe in ourselves because we want to. It is a choice that you make. Because, it makes living quite a bit easier.
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?
