A Modified Social Cognition Model Predicting Patient Health Behaviors: The Mediating Role of Hope — Structured Abstract

Abstract

Across different treatments, people have low levels of compliance with medical regimen (Schuchler and Kivinicm 2006), which reach only about 50% for compliance with prescribed medication, and much lower for compliance with other behavioral requirements such as eating or smoking habits (Dellande, Gilly, and Graham 2004). It is crucial to understand the factors that affect health behaviors and particularly compliance with medical recommendations pertaining to prescribed medication, exercise, diet, and other health improvement behaviors. It is also important to understand the factors that lead to higher treatment satisfaction, as satisfaction is an important indicator of patients’ overall evaluation of the medical service and the treatment recommendations provided by their physician. Social cognition models have often been used in trying to predict health behaviors. Yet, these models have emphasized the rationality of human behavior and although they provide a strong theoretical basis with a “good selection” of variables to consider, they have fallen short on predicting behavior in many situations where other variables come into play, such as emotions or interpersonal relationships (Conner and Norman 1996). Since perceptions of control is a central component of most social cognition models (Conner and Norman 1996), and because health behaviors such as adherence to a prescribed health regimen, and satisfaction with health treatments are potential outcomes of hope (Farran, Herth, and Popovich 1995; MacInnis and De Mello 2005; De Mello, MacInnis and Stewart 2007; Winetrich and Haws 2011), there is a need to study the dynamic between these two constructs and their joint effects on health behaviors. This study advances a model that incorporates perceptions of control and the emotion of hope for the purpose of reaching a better understanding of compliance and satisfaction with health treatments. The proposed model is identified in the context of a lifestyle changing chronic illness: Diabetes Type II, because the life adaptations required have a major impact on the patients’ emotional state.