The Protection Motivation Theory: What It Is And What It Explains
People tend to act differently when we see our health threatened.
These differences have attempted to be explained by various theories within health psychology. Today we will know one of them, Rogers’ protection motivation theory
The theory suggests that people can perform many effective and low-cost behaviors to reduce the risk of getting sick. But what depends on whether or not we execute such behaviors? We will see it below.
The term health psychology was initially proposed by Matarazzo in 1982, who defined this discipline as a set of contributions from education, science and psychology, which aim to promote and maintain health, as well as prevent and treat illness. disease.
To maintain or improve health, people we put health behaviors into practice (for example, stop smoking, walk 30 minutes a day,…).
We are going to analyze the components of the protection motivation theory that enable the execution of these behaviors.
The protection motivation theory
The protection motivation theory was proposed in 1975 by RW Rogers, and reformulated in 1987 by Rippetoe and Rogers. The theory proposes the protection motivation variable to explain health behaviors
In this way, motivation is what directs the behavioral coping process and what finally triggers the behavior (Umeh, 2004; Milne et al., 2002).
More specifically, for a health behavior to be triggered, a worrying behavior must first be expressed. This, in turn, will arise from the combination of two elements that we will see below. From these two evaluations, the motivation to act will emerge, which will guide the coping response to finally manifest the behavior.
The fear of suffering from an illness or damage predisposes us to act (for example, when you are smoking and coughing a lot).
In turn, this element is made up of the perception of severity (the possible harm to be suffered) and susceptibility (the level of risk in which the person is), in addition to the intrinsic benefits of the risk behavior.
2. Assessment of coping behavior
It is the probability of success perceived by the person, that is, the perception they have that their response will be effective in reducing the threat, in addition to the perception of self-efficacy (the person will be able to adopt preventive measures).
These variables will provide the person a perspective on the costs and benefits of performing the behavior
How do you arrive at health behavior?
The cognitive responses that are triggered from these two evaluations, will be added to the person’s belief system
The result will be that it will end up generating adaptive or maladaptive responses, depending on whether it finds a degree of relationship between the threat and the preventive behavior (that is, whether or not it believes that the threat will be reduced by its behavior).
In the context in which the person is and where he or she interacts, There are a series of facilitators or inhibitors that will mediate such behaviors
Assessment of coping behavior
The most important thing about the protection motivation theory is the person’s evaluation of his or her coping behavior already mentioned.
Thus, a positive evaluation (believing that they will be able to perform the behavior and that it will reduce the risk of getting sick) will motivate the person to take actions to benefit their health.
Examples of this could be avoiding alcohol or cigarettes, exercising eat less sugar, etc.
Applications: the health field
The theory of protection motivation has been studied in medicine. For example, in a work by Milne et al (2002) the importance of motivation was highlighted in predicting behavioral intention in the care and prevention of coronary heart disease, although it is not the only variable involved.
The intentionality of the behavior also is key to increasing adherence to treatments for example in the case of children with illnesses.
However, not always when a person feels fear of a threat to their health does it trigger preventive behavior. To do this, there must also be a positive evaluation of the coping behaviors, that is, believing that the behavior will be effective.
Furthermore, the intentionality of the behavior is necessary, but not always sufficient since, as we have seen, other variables often intervene.
These variables modulate said intentionality. Some of them are having or not having the opportunity to carry out the behavior, the information we have, willpower or the ability to maintain motivation.
