Value-based choice: An integrative, neuroscience-informed model of health goals

Abstract

Objective: Traditional models of health behaviour focus on the roles of cognitive, personality and social-cognitive constructs (e.g. executive function, grit, self-efficacy), and give less attention to the process by which these constructs interact in the moment that a health-relevant choice is made. Health psychology needs a process-focused account of how various factors are integrated to produce the decisions that determine health behaviour.

Design: I present an integrative value-based choice model of health behaviour, which characterises the mechanism by which a variety of factors come together to determine behaviour. This model imports knowledge from research on behavioural economics and neuroscience about how choices are made to the study of health behaviour, and uses that knowledge to generate novel predictions about how to change health behaviour. I describe anomalies in value-based choice that can be exploited for health promotion, and review neuroimaging evidence about the involvement of midline dopamine structures in tracking and integrating value-related information during choice. I highlight how this knowledge can bring insights to health psychology using illustrative case of healthy eating.

Conclusion: Value-based choice is a viable model for health behaviour and opens new avenues for mechanism-focused intervention.

Keywords:

• motivation
• health goals
• value-based choice
• behavioural economics
• translational neuroscience

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Natalie Berkman, Rita Ludwig, and Lexi Suppes for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We particularly wish to acknowledge Mark Alfano and Mickey Inzlicht, whose conversations with the first author were instrumental in refining the model.