SOCIAL COGNITION MODEL

Social Cognition Model



Social Cognition Model

Introduction

Social Cognition Models (SCM5) describes what are the important cognitions and their inter-relationships in the regulation of behaviour. Social cognition is foremost a metatheoretical approach to studying social behaviour. Its metatheoretical focus is on the mental processes that guide social interaction. Fiske and Taylor (2001) defined social cognition as "how ordinary people think about people and how they think they think about people" (Fiske and Taylor 2001:1). In our theory of acculturation, we will follow the tradition of pragmatism in social cognition research (Fiske, 2003) that emphasizes the motivational and intentional bases of perception and cognition (e.g., Heider, 1958; James, 1890). This paper critically evaluates a social cognition model, Health Belief model (HBM) and its contribution to Health Psychology. (Galvin 2000)

Discussion

The Health Belief model (HBM) was developed in the 1950s by, among others, Godfrey M. Hochbaum, S. Stephen Kegeles, Howard Leventhal and Irwin M. Rosenstock working at the Public Health Service (Rosenstock, 1974). It was originally developed for the purpose of understanding the widespread failure to accept participation in programmes such as tuberculosis screening for the early detection of asymptomatic disease (Fitzpatrick 2001). It was thought that the belief in one's own susceptibility to a disease combined with a belief in the severity of the disease (called the perceived seriousness of the disease) would provide a force to take action, but not guide the action in any specific direction. Perceived benefits of taking recommended preventive action were thought to provide a direction for the action. But, in addition to this, it was thought that some kind of cue was necessary to instigate actual behaviour ('cues to action'). It could also be a health motive related to the reduction of threat (Rosenstock, Strecher, & Becker 1988). Working against taking action were the perceived barriers to action (Fitzpatrick 2001).

The HBM was originally developed as a systematic method to explain and predict preventive health behavior. It focused on the relationship of health behaviors, practices and utilization of health services. In later years, the HBM has been revised to include general health motivation for the purpose of distinguishing illness and sick-role behavior from health behavior. Originated around 1952. It is generally regarded as the beginning of systematic, theory-based research in health behavior (Fiske 2001).

Figure 1: The Health Belief Model

Figure 1 depicts the model as originally presented by Rosenstock (1974) along with numbered paths added by me. The numbered paths are referred to below in the analysis (see Figure 1). The model incorporates demographic variables, personality, social class, peer pressure and reference group pressure as important contributors to the explanation of individual behaviour (Fiske 2003).

Use of the abbreviation 'etc.' in several places in Figure 1 makes it clear that the number of causal relations proposed is in fact large and indefinite. Instead of treating the top centre box in Figure 1 as one entity, I have separated out the effects of 'demographic variables', 'socio-psychological variables', and 'structural variables'. Further subdivision would have been possible but for parsimony, this ...