Self-regulation interventions – what do we know and where should we go?

ABSTRACT

This special edition of Health Psychology Review provides a very impressive and welcome attempt to synthesise the evidence to date on the effectiveness of self-regulation strategies in understanding and predicting health behaviour change. In this brief commentary I reflect on three issues: (a) the importance of small treatment effects; (b) variability in how interventions are delivered; and (c) the importance of emotion in relation to self-regulation.

KEYWORDS:

• Effect size
• emotion
• form of delivery
• number needed to treat (NNT)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 I have significantly delayed presenting to accident and emergency services on two occasions. The first was a 24-hour delay presenting with severe chest pain which turned out to be a blocked bile duct. The second was a 3-week delay in presenting with a broken leg. In subsequent attempts to try and understand my clearly irrational behaviour, I came to the conclusion that emotion was the main reason for my delay i.e., fear of embarrassment. I did not want to attend the emergency services in case I was told that: (a) I had indigestion and (b) a sprained ankle.