On Wednesday, Michael Quinn, a researcher at the University
of Chicago’s Department of Medicine, gave our group a lecture on behavioral
change. The lecture was meant to get us to think about how to effectively
persuade people to change their behavior, and how to incorporate this
information into our projects.
As Dr. Quinn pointed out, people don’t generally change their
ways when bullied or nagged into it. They need to want it. They need, as Dr.
Quinn put it in his presentation, conviction, confidence, and self-determination.
Not only that, but there are many steps in a process of change:
pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, and
identification. When trying to change someone’s behavior, it is important to
know which stage he or she is at. If you want to convince someone to stop
smoking tobacco, for example, but the person is at the pre-contemplation
phase--he or she hasn’t started thinking about quitting--then it is
ineffective, and even counterproductive, to start by providing the person with
a plan to quit. It is better to gently offer the person some literature about
the issue, so that he or she can move to the contemplation phase.
Personally,
I am most interested in the contemplation phase, the phase in which a person
has begun to think about changing, and isn’t sure whether or not they want to
change. Dr. Quinn said that this is a stage that provokes ambivalence,
discomfort, and anxiety. This struck a chord with me. In my own experience of
trying to change a bad hair-pulling habit, I have come across this anxiety many
times. For me, it is two-fold. The first source of anxiety is that I might, as
I have in the past, try to change but fail. Second, and more irrationally, I
don’t want to address the problem for fear that I’ll find out that I have
already done deep and irreparable damage to my body.
Pulling
hair is relatively benign. But my experience with it gives me empathy for
people who are trying to change unhealthy behaviors. The process is not a
completely rational one; there is a lot of complicated emotion at play. A
doctor cannot simply present a logical argument in favor of change, and expect
a patient to do it. The doctor’s role is much more difficult and complex than
that. Realizing this is going to be really important not only for our projects,
but for most of my endeavors in the future--regardless of what career I pursue.
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