Mechanisms of self-control on health behavior change
10.3760/cma.j.cn371468-20221021-00626
- VernacularTitle:自我控制对健康行为改变的机制
- Author:
Baofang LIU
1
;
Ligang WANG
;
Ying XU
;
Wenbin GAO
;
Ting TAO
;
Chunlei FAN
Author Information
1. 中国科学院心理健康重点实验室，中国科学院心理研究所，北京 100101
- Keywords:
Self-control;
Health behavior change;
Goal-oriented behavior;
Habitual behavior
- From:
Chinese Journal of Behavioral Medicine and Brain Science
2023;32(4):379-384
- CountryChina
- Language:Chinese
-
Abstract:
Self-control brings important effects on the process and maintenance of health behavior change in individuals, but its mechanism is unclear.Healthy behavior change could be divided into goal-oriented behavior initiation stage, combating habit rejection stage, and habit acquisition and maintenance stage.Established theories of health behavior change mainly focus on the conflict between the goal-directed behavior initiation phase and habitual behavior.It is also indicated that disgust is the key mechanism to restrain the implementation of goal-oriented behavior, but ignore the mechanisms in the action implementation and new behavior acquisition phases.In fact, goal-directed and habitual behaviors work together to ensure that individuals adapt efficiently to their environment.However, when goal-oriented behavior becomes habitual, old habit and new goal-oriented behavior begin to compete, causing conflicts and aversion.The core phase of self-control functioning is just in the confrontation with habit rejection phase.On the one hand, self-control directly assists individual goal-directed behavior habituation through conflict sense adaptation.On the other hand, intensive management and stimulus control indirectly assist goal-directed behavior habituation through the relief of conflict sense.Further exploration of the theory and clinical practice of self-control affecting healthy behavior change is needed in the future.
