The psychology of social influence and healthy public policy

Social-psychological research has led to effective health interventions bas ed on social influence processes. For example, school-based substance abuse prevention programs using the social influences model consistently produce better results than programs emphasizing only health information. Other ar eas of application have been prevention of ATDS, marketing social action pr ograms, community-wide health promotion, anti-predjudice intervention, aggr ession control, crime and injury prevention, and resource conservation. Yet another area for application is the emerging field of health promotion, wh ich seeks to cross traditional boundaries to build healthy public policies in all sectors of society. A comprehensive social influences approach is ne eded because education alone is not likely to change fundamental ideas abou t where the responsibility for health rests. Current assignment of responsi bility to the health sector and victim-blaming will be difficult to defeat. Positive changes at the required levels will depend on better understandin g of how to instill health promotion values in policy arenas beyond the hea lth care sector and better understanding of the dynamics of policy-making b ehaviors and related social influence processes. Social psychologists can a nd should assist the health promotion field to meet these challenges by con ducting descriptive and intervention research on the psychology of social i nfluence processes in public policy-making arenas, (C) 1999 American Health Foundation and Academic Press.