Simply asking questions about health behaviors increases both healthy and unhealthy behaviors

Abstract

Several recent lines of survey research demonstrate that the simple act of asking a question can lead to changes in a respondent's subsequent behavior. In the current research we asked college students their likelihood to either (i) exercise or (ii) use illegal drugs in the coming 2 months. After 2 months we asked the same college students to report their exercising and illegal drug use behaviors. The findings provide further evidence that these "question-behavior" effects occur for socially normative personal health behaviors, a domain that should have high levels of respondent vigilance and defensive processing. Of more concern, we demonstrate that when a question is asked about a socially non-normative health behavior (i.e., illegal drug use), instead of decreases in the behavior we see increased rates of the non-normative behavior