Cargando…

The Effect of Nonessentialist Beliefs About Aging on Health Behavior Intentions

Globally, as people expect the longer life expectancy than ever before, people have increasing concerns about their health and aging. Although what people believe regarding aging can affect their health behaviors, limited research has investigated which beliefs regarding aging influence health behav...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Oh, Ga-Eun (Grace)
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7740314/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1046
_version_ 1783623502184579072
author Oh, Ga-Eun (Grace)
author_facet Oh, Ga-Eun (Grace)
author_sort Oh, Ga-Eun (Grace)
collection PubMed
description Globally, as people expect the longer life expectancy than ever before, people have increasing concerns about their health and aging. Although what people believe regarding aging can affect their health behaviors, limited research has investigated which beliefs regarding aging influence health behaviors. Previous research has shown that essentialist beliefs about aging reflect beliefs that the aging process is fixed, while nonessentialist beliefs about aging reflect the beliefs that the aging process is rather malleable. Since beliefs in nonessentialism regarding aging imply the benefits of health-promoting behaviors, we examine if manipulating nonessentialist beliefs about aging could contribute to intentions to engage in health behaviors. We also investigate if age and income might moderate the effect of nonessentialist beliefs. We conducted an experiment with a sample of American participants of varied ages (n = 599). The results showed that compared to essentialist beliefs, nonessentialist beliefs regarding aging significantly increased an intention to eat healthy food but they did not improve intentions of other health-promoting behaviors in terms of regular exercise and consumption of fruits and vegetables. Income moderated the effect of essentialist beliefs on an intention to eat fruits and vegetables. Specifically, nonessentialist beliefs had a positive effect among high-income people but rendered a negative effect among low-income people. Together, the present findings provide initial evidence that nonessentialist beliefs have a potential to promote health behaviors and call for the further investigation of the effects of educating nonessentialist beliefs on actual health behaviors and the boundary conditions of the effects.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-7740314
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2020
publisher Oxford University Press
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-77403142020-12-21 The Effect of Nonessentialist Beliefs About Aging on Health Behavior Intentions Oh, Ga-Eun (Grace) Innov Aging Abstracts Globally, as people expect the longer life expectancy than ever before, people have increasing concerns about their health and aging. Although what people believe regarding aging can affect their health behaviors, limited research has investigated which beliefs regarding aging influence health behaviors. Previous research has shown that essentialist beliefs about aging reflect beliefs that the aging process is fixed, while nonessentialist beliefs about aging reflect the beliefs that the aging process is rather malleable. Since beliefs in nonessentialism regarding aging imply the benefits of health-promoting behaviors, we examine if manipulating nonessentialist beliefs about aging could contribute to intentions to engage in health behaviors. We also investigate if age and income might moderate the effect of nonessentialist beliefs. We conducted an experiment with a sample of American participants of varied ages (n = 599). The results showed that compared to essentialist beliefs, nonessentialist beliefs regarding aging significantly increased an intention to eat healthy food but they did not improve intentions of other health-promoting behaviors in terms of regular exercise and consumption of fruits and vegetables. Income moderated the effect of essentialist beliefs on an intention to eat fruits and vegetables. Specifically, nonessentialist beliefs had a positive effect among high-income people but rendered a negative effect among low-income people. Together, the present findings provide initial evidence that nonessentialist beliefs have a potential to promote health behaviors and call for the further investigation of the effects of educating nonessentialist beliefs on actual health behaviors and the boundary conditions of the effects. Oxford University Press 2020-12-16 /pmc/articles/PMC7740314/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1046 Text en © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Abstracts
Oh, Ga-Eun (Grace)
The Effect of Nonessentialist Beliefs About Aging on Health Behavior Intentions
title The Effect of Nonessentialist Beliefs About Aging on Health Behavior Intentions
title_full The Effect of Nonessentialist Beliefs About Aging on Health Behavior Intentions
title_fullStr The Effect of Nonessentialist Beliefs About Aging on Health Behavior Intentions
title_full_unstemmed The Effect of Nonessentialist Beliefs About Aging on Health Behavior Intentions
title_short The Effect of Nonessentialist Beliefs About Aging on Health Behavior Intentions
title_sort effect of nonessentialist beliefs about aging on health behavior intentions
topic Abstracts
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7740314/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1046
work_keys_str_mv AT ohgaeungrace theeffectofnonessentialistbeliefsaboutagingonhealthbehaviorintentions
AT ohgaeungrace effectofnonessentialistbeliefsaboutagingonhealthbehaviorintentions