Do we inwardly digest health promotion messages, or go with our gut reaction in deciding to get off the couch or not?
It's one of the most perplexing questions facing those in the health promotion field: how to help people adopt and maintain a physically active lifestyle. That's where behavioural scientist Dr. Tanya Berry comes in.
Newly appointed as a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Canada Research Chair in Physical Activity Promotion, Berry will be on the front lines of the race to find the answer.
It's a crucial question, because while many of us know that being active is good for us, over 40 per cent of Canadians are sedentary. And that has major impacts on our health care system because sedentary living is linked to major diseases, from cardiovascular disease to type 2 diabetes, obesity, even early death.
Yet changing health behaviours is one of the hardest things to do, and attempts to do so are often unsuccessful because, Berry believes, our behaviours can often be governed by our initial, visceral reactions to a message even though we know, for example, that physical activity is healthy and we should do it.
"If someone who hates exercise is confronted with the message to go out and get exercise, their first reaction is negative," explains Berry. "Afterwards they might reflect on the message and tell themselves it's good for them. But their gut reaction is what is most likely to guide their behaviour.
"The problem with much of the current research we have on behaviour change assumes that people are going to reflect on the messages they see," says Berry, who believes instead that understanding how we think about exercise at the sub-conscious level may unlock the secret to helping people adopt and maintain healthy, active lifestyles.
Berry will examine this dual processing of messages (conscious and automatic) that occurs in our cognitive processes, as well as look at ways to deepen understanding of how best to promote health in a cacophonous, and often overwhelming media environment, where so many different messages clamour for our attention.
She and her research team will be collaborating with a team in the Netherlands and others at the University of Alberta as they pioneer this little-explored field. "We will start looking at whether you can change someone's implicit or 'gut reaction' thought processes and how to measure those in relation to physical activity to see if they can be changed. If they can be changed that means you can change behaviour," Berry says.
She will also look at determining the most effective interventions to help people become and stay physically active - for the long term.
Often people in an intervention will have good intentions, but fall back on their old habits of sedentary behaviour over time. "We need to know why," says Berry.
Berry says it's time to look at the question from a different angle. "Traditional approaches to changing behaviours, such as looking at people's attitudes and intentions, and social-cognitive variables that rely on reflective behaviours, haven't worked. And though traditional methods are important, they're just one piece of the puzzle.
"I think we've been neglecting a whole other way of looking at the physical activity realm," says Berry.
And the time has never been more ripe.
"If so many people are inactive, and this research can help inform them about how to adopt and maintain healthy lifestyle behaviours, then we're moving in the right direction."
Dr. Berry's Canada Research Chair in Physical Activity Promotion is a Tier 2 Chair, tenable for five years and renewable once. They are awarded to exceptional, emerging scholars, acknowledged by their peers as having the potential to lead in their field. The University receives $100,000 annually for five years for each Tier 2 Chair.
Berry is the third Canada Research Chair to be awarded in the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation.
More information at www.chairs-chaires.gc.ca