Treat Yourself or Promote Your Health: A Presentation and Examination of the Mechanisms Behind Health Behavior Spillover

Abstract

Regular performance of multiple health behaviors additively benefits well-being (Loef & Walach, 2012). Little is known, however, about the psychological pathways by which the performance of one health behavior affects the subsequent performance of a second, different health behavior. A theoretical model was developed to examine six psychological constructs that might mediate this effect (i.e., self-efficacy, attitudes, identity strength, goal commitment, goal progress, and self-control resources) and was tested using exercise and eating behaviors. Study 1 tested whether a naturalistic exercise session led to changes in the psychological variables and whether these changes influenced a subsequent behavior – snack choice. There were substantial changes in all of the psychological variables from pre- to post-exercise, as predicted, but none affected snack choice. Study 2 investigated whether experimentally manipulating two categories of psychological pathways (i.e., those that were expected to facilitate healthy eating and those that were expected to lead to unhealthy eating) would influence the effect of exercise on eating behavior throughout the rest of the day. Although exercising did not directly affect eating behavior, it did indirectly affect three eating behavior outcomes, leading to increased fruit and vegetable consumption, decreased consumption of percentage of calories from sugar, and decreased indulgent food consumption. The effects of exercise on fruit and vegetable consumption were mediated by increases in self-efficacy, health goal commitment, and self-control resources. The effect of exercise on the percentage of calories consumed from sugar was mediated by increases in self-control resources. The effects of exercise on indulgent food consumption were mediated by increases in affective health attitudes and self-control resources, respectively. In sum, the model proposed and tested here consolidates six different areas of research into explanations for the mechanisms through which behavioral spillover between two health-promoting behaviors might occur.