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The application of behavioral science theory is instrumental in advancing nursing research and practice. Nurses can benefit from a thorough understanding of theoretical perspectives related to health behavior change. Behavioral science theory can provide a conceptual context for understanding patient behavior, it can guide research on the determinants of health behavior and health service delivery, and it can offer alternative approaches to nursing practice that may improve the effectiveness of patient care. The aim of this paper is to provide some examples of behavioral theories that can be used in nursing research and practice, and provide an example of how one theory, Stages of Change (Transtheoretical Model), can be applied to older adult fall prevention. Given the critical role behavior plays in premature morbidity and mortality, public health nurses and researchers can benefit by broadening the use of theory in the design and implementation of interventions, using behavioral theory as their guide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agent-based modelling and simulation (ABMS) has been used by researchers from a variety of disciplines to study a range of phenomena. At present, ABMS is vastly underutilized in organizational psychology, yet we believe it offers a range of potential benefits that are currently not well catered for by existing tools. In this paper, we introduce ABMS and explain how it differs from current approaches. We illustrate the potential advantages of the approach through a range of examples and through the identification of opportunities in the field of organizational psychology. We also highlight potential limitations of the ABMS approach, and discuss the circumstances under which it may make a worthwhile contribution. Practitioner Points This paper outlines ABMS and explains how it adds to the existing toolset of the organizational psychologist. Practitioners will find ABMS and this paper particularly useful: When they are working in high-risk environments, where getting it wrong is costly., Where there are practical or ethical difficulties in conducting real-world research., Where they want to develop and test more holistic interpretations of complex systems and problems., Where they wish to examine feedback loops and/or the impact of time on behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes that attitudes should be viewed as strategies for meeting personal needs; they serve psychological functions. After reviewing the early functional attitude theories proposed by Katz and by Smith, and some of the problems associated with them, a new functional approach is outlined. This neofunctional approach distinguishes two principal sources for the benefit related to attitudes: the attitude's object and the attitude's expression. Within these two major categories, specific functions are described based on the author's research and that of earlier functional theorists. The personality, situational, and domain characteristics likely to influence the functional value of attitudes are also discussed. Strategies suggested by this approach for changing attitudes are briefly considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: 'Habit' is a process whereby situational cues generate behaviour automatically, via activation of learned cue-behaviour associations. This article presents a conceptual and empirical rationale for distinguishing between two manifestations of habit in health behaviour, triggering selection and initiation of an action ('habitual instigation'), or automating progression through subactions required to complete action ('habitual execution'). We propose that habitual instigation accounts for habit-action relationships, and is the manifestation captured by the Self-Report Habit Index (SRHI), the dominant measure in health psychology.Design: Conceptual analysis and prospective survey.Methods: Student participants (N = 229) completed measures of intentions, the original, non-specific SRHI, an instigation-specific SRHI variant, an execution-specific variant, and, 1 week later, behaviour, in three health domains (flossing, snacking, and breakfast consumption). Effects of habitual instigation and execution on behaviour were modelled using regression analyses, with simple slope analysis to test habit-intention interactions. Relationships between instigation, execution, and non-specific SRHI variants were assessed via correlations and factor analyses.Results: The instigation-SRHI was uniformly more predictive of behaviour frequency than the execution-SRHI and corresponded more closely with the original SRHI in correlation and factor analyses.Conclusions: Further, experimental work is needed to separate the impact of the two habit manifestations more rigorously. Nonetheless, findings qualify calls for habit-based interventions by suggesting that behaviour maintenance may be better served by habitual instigation and that disrupting habitual behaviour may depend on overriding habits of instigation. Greater precision of measurement may help to minimize confusion between habitual instigation and execution. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Habit is often used to understand, explain, and change health behaviour. Making behaviour habitual has been proposed as a means of maintaining behaviour change. Concerns have been raised about the extent to which health behaviour can be habitual. What does this study add? A conceptual and empirical rationale for discerning habitually instigated and habitually executed behaviour. Results show habit-behaviour effects are mostly attributable to habitual instigation, not execution. The most common habit measure, the Self-Report Habit Index, measures habitual instigation, not execution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Specialized units for the assessment and management of concerning behaviors towards public figures have been set up in various jurisdictions. Their efficacy has been demonstrated descriptively and in terms of reduction in concern rates. This study of 100 consecutive cases from the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre (FTAC) in the UK uses a novel measure of outcome in the form of reduction in behaviors of concern and in police call-outs/stops, using data culled from police and health service records. It adopts a mirrored design, comparing individuals over 12-month and 2-year periods before and after FTAC intervention. It demonstrates significant reductions in both numbers of individuals involved in, and number of actual incidents of, concerning communication and problematic approach, as well as police call-outs/stops. Most results are consistent across subgroups with regard to gender, previous convictions, concern level, compulsory hospitalization and grievance-driven behavior. Such threat assessment units reduce risky behavior and save police time and, possibly, costs. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent decades have seen remarkable growth in research and theorizing about relationships. E. Berscheid (1999) invigorated this growth by proclaiming “The Greening of Relationship Science,” the emergence of a multidisciplinary science of interpersonal relationships with enormous potential to advance knowledge about human behavior and to provide an empirically informed framework for improving the human condition. Here I discuss several steps necessary to move the field from a green science toward a more mature, ripened one, including the need to be action oriented but in a theory-building way, to become more cumulative and collective, and to develop an integrated network of theories, constructs, and their observable manifestations. Perceived partner responsiveness is one possible central organizing theme for the diverse phenomena relationship scientists study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and two organizational rewards—salary and promotion—was examined. Employee gender also was tested as a moderator. Data from 440 individuals employed in multiple settings indicated that individuals who reported engaging more frequently in OCB directed toward the organization (OCBO) also reported receiving more promotions. Further, results indicated that gender was a moderator such that the relationship between OCBO and promotion was stronger for males than for females. The results also revealed an interaction between OCB directed toward individuals (OCBI) and OCBO. Specifically, high OCBI and low OCBO related to lower promotion rates than did low OCBI and low OCBO. Results are discussed in terms of implications for individual career development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do infants identify the psychological actors in their environments? Three groups of 12-month-old infants were tested for their willingness to encode a simple approach behavior as goal-directed as a function of whether it was performed by (1) a human hand, (2) a morphologically unfamiliar green object that interacted with a confederate and behaved intentionally, or (3) the same unfamiliar green object that behaved in a matched, but apparently random manner. Using a visual habituation technique, only infants in the first two conditions were found to encode the approach behavior as goal-directed. Thus infants appear able to attribute goals to non-human, even unfamiliar agents. These results imply that by the end of the first year of life infants have a broad notion of what counts as an agent that cannot easily be reduced to humans, objects that are perceptually similar to humans, or objects that display self-propulsion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction, to an issue on privacy as a social issue and behavioral concept, discusses what privacy is, by examining definitions and theories of privacy, and what privacy does, by reviewing the benefits of obtaining privacy and the costs of failing to achieve and of losing privacy. It provides a possible bridge between social psychological and social issues approaches to privacy and examines privacy as a social issue for Americans as citizens, health-care recipients, consumers, and employees. It then briefly explores behavioral aspects of privacy, including indicators of privacy's importance and the generally overlooked status of privacy in psychology . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present study was to experimentally examine the influence of a self-aggressive model on self-aggressive behavior under controlled laboratory conditions. Participants (N = 94) were given the opportunity to sell-administer electric shock while competing with a fictitious opponent in a reaction-time task. Participants observed the opponent self-administer either increasingly intense shock (a self-aggressive model) or constant low shocks (a non-self-aggressive model). Self-aggression was defined as the intensity of shock that was self-administered by participants. Results provide support for the notion that social information can influence the expression of self-aggressive behavior. Specifically, participants attended to the opponent's shock choices in both model conditions, and chose shocks consistent with those of the observed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examined observers' reactions to sexual assault victims engaging in different forms of self-attributed responsibility. Theory and research suggests that behavioral responsibility contributes positively to the coping process of victims, whereas characterological responsibility impedes it. For observers in the present study, the expression of either type of self-responsibility by a rape victim resulted in a more negative impression of the victim's emotional well-being and greater attribution of responsibility to the victim in comparison to a victim relying solely on chance explanations. Moreover, this bias was evident among rape crisis counselors as well as lay observers. Discussion considered the implications of such biased perceptions for sexual assault victims and the need for a fuller understanding of the nature of self-attributions of responsibility by victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The taxonomy of aggressive behavior has been studied by many social scientists. In the present study this topic is approached empirically. A group of convicts were asked to quantify pairwise dissimilarity among aggressive social situations. The data obtained were processed by Multidimensional Scaling. The results show the necessity of taking into account 3 dimensions (justifiability, instrumentality and degree of involvement with the victim) in distinguishing among aggressive episodes. This finding is discussed in terms of cultural differences, and the usefulness of the perception of aggressive episodes as a basis for a taxonomic system is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nine groups of 50 college students responded to acceptance (imitation) and recall questions after being exposed to one of three written modeling sequences (prosocial, neutral, or aggressive), each of which included one of three types of vicarious consequences (positive, neutral, or negative). The results provided strong support for the theoretical predictions regarding the influence of written vicarious consequences on acceptance and recall of modeled behaviors. Regardless of the type of story, positive vicarious consequences led to a significantly higher level of acceptance of the modeled actions than did negative vicarious consequences. The effects of neutral vicarious consequences on acceptance varied with the nature of the modeling story. Although positive and negative vicarious consequences generally led to higher levels of overall recall than did neutral vicarious consequences, patterns of overall recall varied across the three types of stories. Similarly, analyses of the three components (details, behaviors, consequences) of the overall recall measure indicated that recall patterns were inconsistent across the three types of stories. Thus, the results of the present study indicate the importance of considering both vicarious consequences and the situations in which these consequences occur. Furthermore, the effects of written vicarious consequences appear to parallel those of live and/or taped consequences. Continued investigation of these effects is highly warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies have found a substantial association between subjects' judgments about the co-occurrence of personality items and the items' actual co-occurrence, lending support to the validity of implicit personality theory. This work has recently been called into question by an investigation of Mirels (1976) that reported a nonsignificant relationship between judged probabilities of item pairs and the pairs' empirical coendorsement probabilities (actually calculated conditional probabilities) derived from sell-report responses. Using Mirels' data as well as new data, an appreciable and highly significant association between judgments of behavioral co-occurrence and empirical coendorsement was found, when the latter was measured by correlational-type indexes instead of conditional probability. This outcome indicates that the divergent results in the Mirels investigation were due to its use of the conditional probability index as a measure of empirical coendorsement. These findings add to the accumulating body of evidence pointing to the validity of implicit personality theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes a model for training counselors in cognitive skills that can be used to supplement any systematic training approach to behavioral skills. The four phases of the training model are designed to teach counselor trainees cognitive skills and self-instructional strategies related to (a) attending to and seeking information, (b) forming hypotheses and conceptual models, and (c) intervention planning and self-instruction. Instructional techniques and exercises are described for each training phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the significance of psychology to society specifically the implications of psychology to different social issues. The author cites the social setting in the novel "1984," by George Orwell as a likely result of the practice and utilization of psychology. Psychology as a profession has gained popularity with the advent of new psychodynamic concepts and the professionalization of psychotherapy. Likewise, cross-cultural psychology is seen as a means of understanding and preventing international tensions and conflicts.

The article focuses on study conducted to validate behaviorally the Assertion Inventory (AI) using a role-play format. The Al is a 40-item questionnaire that samples a range of situations, which fall into eight response classes. Results of the study provided strong support for the validity of the Al. Subjects identified by the Al as assertive, unassertive, doesn't care, or anxious performer were similarly identified by role-play on four of the five dependent measures— assertive content, affect, request for new behavior, and subjective unit of disturbance.

Presents an overview of the articles published in the July 1993 issue of "Behavioral Sciences and the Law," Volume 11. Rise of interest in coercion in mental health care; Investigation of patients' reports of coercion; Development of a conceptual framework.