Is your health malleable or fixed? The influence of implicit theories on health-related attitudes and behaviour

Abstract

Objective: Implicit theories of health describe the extent to which health is perceived as a fixed (entity theory) versus malleable (incremental theory) characteristic. In four studies, it was investigated how these theories correspond to health-related attitudes and behaviours.

Design: In Study 1 (N = 130), the relationship of implicit theories of health and health-related behaviours was assessed via self-reports. To investigate their causal influence on health-related attitudes (Study 2; N = 357) and hypothetical food choices (Study 3; N = 351), implicit theories of health were manipulated using fictitious newspaper articles. In Study 4 (N = 235), the relationship of implicit theories and health behaviours in daily life was investigated using experience sampling.

Results: Study 1 showed that a stronger incremental theory is positively associated with health behaviours like eating healthily or engaging in physical activity. Studies 2 and 3 revealed that a manipulation of implicit theories of health changes health-related attitudes and hypothetical food choices via an internal health locus of control. Study 4 showed that individuals with a stronger incremental theory reported more health-promoting behaviours in daily life.

Conclusion: These findings extend the knowledge about implicit theories as they show that they are highly relevant for health promotion.

Keywords:

• Implicit theories
• health-related attitudes
• health behaviour
• locus of control

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Lisa Segbert, Isabel Skuplik, and Leonie Wiegmann for their indispensable practical support.

Disclosure statement

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

1 Raw frequencies of behaviours cannot be used because most participants did not answer all signals (e.g. because they were busy or missed the signal).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an Advanced Postdoc Grant from the University of Cologne awarded to S. Dohle.