Health Psychology: Understanding Psychology and Behavior in Health and Illness
Discuss about the Psychology of Health and Illness.
Health Psychology is a kind of study in which processes of behaviour and psychology in health and illness are studied. It makes people understand as to how psychology and behaviour and other cultural attributes of health and illness. The factors in psychology can easily affect health. Behaviour with the sick can also affect his health (Goodwin & Friedman, 2006). Such as enhancing health if regular exercise is being done. The psychologists of health try to understand health as a product and not just the biological process. They also understand it in behavioural and social way processes (Hevey, French, Marteau, & Sutton, 2009).
The combination of mind and behaviour is what that makes psychology. There are some theories which is related to the health such as Health Belief model, Theory of planned behaviour and Social cognition theory etc. Psychology helps in investigating some concepts like cognition, perception, emotion, relationships and functioning of brain etc.(Freedland, 2017). All these theories can help in analysing the behaviour of humans when they come in contact with the media. The body types which are shown in media influences women to desire for such petite body types. Health and psychology theories help in reading the minds and behaviours of humans and studies as to how such behaviour can lead to harmful impacts. For Example: theory of planned behaviour: This theory means the model which places the individual in the social world and also in their individual one. It is related to the cognition model which forces young women to become petite and have the body type that is shown in media to feel the part of the society. Same goes with health belief model. It says that individual’s behaviour can be dependent on N number of beliefs such as women desire bodies like shown in media because they believe they will be accepted in community if they have such body types.
According to Lisa Mask and Celine Blanchard (2011), image of body is a construct which is multi-dimensional and includes two components: Attitudinal in which the perception that one has about his/her body and perceptual in which the measure of body size is actual that is(Mask & Blanchard, 2011). The purpose of the study was to study the link between media exposure towards the dissatisfaction about the body and emotional or disturbed eating. This could be done via examining the factors of pressure and internalization. Also some more effects of culture and weight. When the studies were done earlier, the impacts of TV and magazine were different and separated. Media is one thing due to which the pressure exerts the weight conscious people. Things that people read or see soon becomes the guiding principles for them. The study showed the results regarding media that magazines are mostly read by women and they read 3 magazines on an average on a regular basis. Similar, on a regular basis they see average of 4 programs. Further studies were done that white women are generally low weighted than the non white ones. White women have huge dissatisfaction about their body and they have this pressure of conforming for thin pictures in media. Due to this, they develop risk of eating disorder. Ethnicity did not have much big effect on this issue. Relationship with the TV is negative but unimportant and magazine exposure was more pertinent to dissatisfaction of the body and eating disorder. The conclusion could be drawn from such tests that pressure was directly proportional to the Television watching. Ethnicity, BMI, Magazines all these were not very significant as compared to the Televisions watching in women and body dissatisfaction.
Theories Related to Health: Health Belief Model and Theory of Planned Behavior
According to Karen Ruth Brown (2006), he concluded that relations which are displayed in undergraduate women’s exposure to the females who are petite face dissatisfaction towards their body when they see girls in media displaying their body(Brown, 2006). Mostly because of the Magazine, these petite girls feel low and depressed. When the pictures of the glowing and good body women are seen in the magazines, this causes great mental disorders and sometimes physical too in few women. The trends in the media and the magazine publications were studied in which body images of the females are analysed. The years of the study were 1950, 1995, 2000 and 2005. The study was done and the content which they got out of it were analysed. The analysis discovered as to how the female undergraduates would give rank to the size of the bodies of females whose pictures were there in the magazines. The images that were to be ranked were the samples of the body images of females which were showcased in the year 2005 magazines and there were some archived issues from the year 1995 and 2000 magazines too. All these magazines were those which were seen the most by the female undergraduate students by that time or we can say that they were mostly viewed. Some of the magazines form the era May and June 1050 were also assessed in this research study. The data which was collected had to be analysed and the comparisons between the years and the magazines were to be done. Hence, the study affirmed the old research conclusions that over the period of 55 years since the data was collected, there has been decline of the samples or female body images in the magazine covers. However, no major difference was seen between the means of population from 2000 to 2005.
According to Kimberley Ann Davis (2007), eating disorders are generated in women in order to get into shape and attain the favourable or desired body (Davis, 2007). For young girls, the messages which spread that the achievement is actually taken in a narrow mind sense and keenly emphasize on the bodies. Culture encourages the idea that girl’s bodies are some kind of project that is to be worked on. National Eating Disorder Association in 2005 revealed that $40 billion dollar was spent on the diets and the products which help in dieting in United States of America. On an average 25% of the males in US and 45% of females were dieting. According to Kurth, Krahn and Drewnoski (1995) researched that about 91% of the females in the campus of the college tried to lose their weight or at least maintain their weight with the help of diets and 22% women diet too often or one can say always. About one half of the young girls and one third of the young boys used control behaviours of weight which are really unhealthy (Barnes, 2015). Such unhealthy behaviour was that they used to skip the meals, fasted, smoked, vomited or took pills to lose weight. The disorders of eating actually are complex conditions which can result in the social factors, psychological factors. For example: The self-esteem of a person goes low, people tease these kind of low esteemed people, teased about the size and the pressure from the culture is also very much. This cultural pressure adores thin body and also appreciates obtaining the perfect body. The outcomes of eating disorders could be high BP, loss of muscle, gallbladder disease and even death. According to the NEDA in 2005, anorexia nervosa was the highest premature fatality rate of any mental illness. The death rate of women who suffers with anorexia is to be 0.56% per year or 5.6% per 10 years. This means 12 times higher than usual rate. Obesity is not good for health. It can cause severe problems to the body and mind and can cause death as well. It is said that every disease small or big starts with the stomach issues. Centre for disease reports the occurrence of the overweight people. The BMI of the people should be under 25 ideally. From the research, mostly people in America were overweight. People are overweight and then there is thin body images being appreciated in media and magazines are both creating problems in the society. The combination of both is fatal. As the result, it was very significant to find out all the possible solutions and the factors that contributed to this type of development of eating disorders. There are presently also studies being done on body dissatisfaction, eating disorders and media.
Effects of Media on Body Dissatisfaction and Eating Disorders in Women
According to Brittani D. Wynn (2012), the research focussed on the influence of the media on the images of the body in the adult girls (Wynn, 2010). This research explored as to how the images either positive or negative continue in women as adults too and they also percept their bodies should be lean and thin. The research was done on 150 women who were graduates as well as undergraduates. They were all very conscious about their bodies and media did have a huge impact on the body images as adults. A major part of the study was emphasized on the women who had negative thinking about their body because of the influence of the media as adults. They obviously had bad perceptions for having bad body too. The comparison and the contrast were done in the relationship with the media and the body images of those girls and women. The study showed that the numbers differ from the women of age 18 to 25. They were surveyed about their old relation with the media and were contrasted with the present relations with the media. Hence, there were studies found that with some women had pessimistic image of their body, there were proofs too to display those negative perceptions about the relationship between the media and the women’s current body image too. Many women felt that currently the media was not portraying the female body very correctly. They showed women who were too thin and this type of body is very unrealistic to have. Such types of bodies are acquired by the girls who are in constant eyes of their trainers and doctors. In general, such type of bodies was not even easy to have. This study was done on the student who used to study in college. This was the strength of this research. Though, some limitations were also there as these women were well educated and already in a setting academically and therefore more literate media and conscious people were required. Male people came out to not be conscious at all in the research as they were not at all influenced by the bodies of the males which were shown in media or the magazines.
The above paragraphs focus on the findings of the researchers and the conclusions that were given by those people in these findings. All the four literature reviews end with one end note which can be analysed that the media displays the body images which are liked and desired by all the females of every age. They start desiring those types of body shapes and do whatever it takes to attain such type of bodies. They do diets and abnormal eating because of those diets. As a result, the desired body shape is also not attained as well as they do great harm to their body (Gerger, 2014). Abnormal eating is one of them. Due to abnormal eating, obesity increases and creates diseases in the bodies of all the males and females both. From all the above statements and findings, it can be concluded that media affects women and sometimes men a lot and comes out to be harmful as it displays images which are unrealistic and hard to attain for people who see them.
The Link Between Media Exposure and Body Dissatisfaction and Emotional Eating
References
Akca, Y., & Ozer, G. (2014). Diffusion of Innovation Theory and an Implementation on Enterprise Resource Planning Systems. International Journal of Business and Management, 9 (4).
Barnes, B. R. (2015). Critiques of health behaviour change programmes. South African journal of psychology, 45 (4).
Brown, K. R. (2006). MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS OF FEMALE BODY IMAGES IN WOMEN’S MAGAZINES. Graduate College of the Oklahoma University .
Carillo, K. D. (2012). Social Cognitive Theory in IS Research – Literature Review, Criticism, and Research Agenda. Retrieved May 3, 2018, from pdfs.semanticscholar.org: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1fa9/ed8a71283e55f1337e1151c2f5ec0e9e1024.pdf
Davis, K. A. (2007). Media Exposure, Body Dissatisfaction and Disordered Eating: An Examination of Mediating and Moderating Mechanisms. Florida State University Libraries .
Freedland, K. E. (2017). A New Era for Health Psychology. Health Psychology, 36 (1), 1-4.
Gerger, E. (2014). Implications of social practice theory for the development of a numeracy programme for the Gusilay people group in Senegal. Gerger, Implications of social practice theory for the development of a numeracy programme., 9 (2), 85-96.
Goodwin, R. D., & Friedman, H. S. (2006). Health Status and the Five-factor Personality Traits in a Nationally Representative Sample. Journal of Health Psychology, 11 (5), 643-654.
Harinie, L. T., Sudiro, A., Rahayu, M., & Fatchan, A. (2017). Study of the Bandura’s Social Cognitive Learning Theory for the Entrepreneurship Learning Process. Social Sciences, 6 (1), 1-6.
Hevey, D., French, D. P., Marteau, T. M., & Sutton, S. (2009). Impact of Different Approaches to Measuring Susceptibility to Diabetes. Journal of Health Psychology, 14 (3), 372-377.
Lopes, A., Gill, A., & Fam, D. (2015). Design and Social practice theory: A promising dialogue for sustainable living. J of Design Research, 13 (3), 327-347.
Marks, D. F. (2008). The Quest for Meaningful Theory in Health Psychology. Journal of Health Psychology, 13 (8), 977-981.
Mask, L., & Blanchard, C. M. (2011). The effects of “thin ideal” media on women’s body image concerns and eating-related intentions: The beneficial role of an autonomous regulation of eating behaviors. Body Image, 8.
Murray, M. (2012). Social history of health psychology: context and textbooks. Health Psychology Review, 8 (2), 1-23.
Murray, M., Nelson, G., Poland, B., & Ferris, L. (2004). Assumptions and Values of Community Health Psychology. Journal of Health Psychology, 9 (2), 323-333.
Nicassio, P. M., Meyerowitz, B. E., & Kerns, R. D. (2004). The Future of Health Psychology Interventions. Health Psychology, 23 (2), 132-137.
Nicassio, P. M., Meyerowitz, B. E., & Kerns, R. D. (2004). The Future of Health Psychology Interventions. Health Psychology, 23 (2), 132-137.
Ntemana, T. J., & Olatokun, W. (2012). ANALYZING THE INFLUENCE OF DIFFUSION OF INNOVATION ATTRIBUTES ON LECTURERS’ ATTITUDES TOWARD INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES. An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments, 8 (2), 179-197.
Odgen, J. (2003). Some Problems With Social Cognition Models: A Pragmatic and Conceptual Analysis. Health Psychology, 22 (4), 424-428.
Pawlik, K., & Rosenzweig, M. R. (2000). Health Psychology. International Handbook of PSYCHOLOGY , 452-465.
Vinck, J., Oldenburg, B., & Lengerke, T. V. (2004). Editorial: Health Psychology and Public Health—Bridging the Gap. Journal of Health Psychology, 9 (1), 5-12.
Walker, R. (1999). Models in health psychology: an introduction. Psychology Series, 3 (6).
Wynn, B. D. (2010). The Impact of Media on Body Images of Young. Research Paper .
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
