6th EUSPR Conference

 
6th European Society for Prevention Research (EUSPR) Conference

Changing Behaviour without Talking: automatic processes and the regulation of behaviour

Prevention has until recently been dominated by approaches that assume that humans always act rationally, make informed and free decisions, and are consciously aware of the motives of their own behaviour. However, it is clear that such approaches only partly explain health and social behaviours. Crucially, non-conscious and automatic processes are important in determining human behaviour.

Industries make use of such processes to modify attentional focus through advertising, packaging, or the withholding of healthy choices. In accordance with the socioecological model of health, environmental cues such as the design of cities, the availability, affordability and acceptance of certain commodities, the ease of making relatively heathier choices and what we perceive as prevailing social norms in a given environment may determine our behaviour far more than we are generally aware of, and are ready to admit. Such determinants may go some way to explain a good deal of unhealthy and anti-social/criminal behaviour.

This year’s EUSPR Conference priority is Prevention Without Talking.