Healthy lifestyle through minimal tricks

Lifestyles: Better tricks than rational appeals

22/09/2012

Nutritionists and health experts keep pointing out the benefits of healthy lifestyles. Hardly anyone can change their formerly unhealthy into a healthy lifestyle despite the numerous tips. Behavioral researchers have found that cognitive assessment can not change that much. For the change of health, a few small tricks are enough to outsmart the internal conflict.

"My doctor gave me good advice after lab values ​​showed elevated liver values. But I could not stick to it, "says one patient. This is how most people feel when they have to change something fundamental in life. The scientist Theresa Marteau from the British University of Cambridge and her team summarized in the "Science" published article that "a few small tricks are enough to change the way of life". During research, they found that "good advice alone is not enough to make life healthier".

Nutrition programs usually bring only little
The tricks are so simple and yet effective. The simplest rule is to make it as easy as possible for humans to change. For example, it would be enough to build the salad bar next to the meat stall in the next range or not to build the stairs behind the elevator, but in the immediate vicinity. These simple "tricks" would lead in the opinion of the researchers rather to a change in life, as health information or well-intentioned exhortations, as the behavioral researchers write in the journal.

Diet or nutrition programs use only a little. The reason for this is the way in which people meet cognitively on the conscious but also the subconscious level, according to study author Marteau. Rarely, therefore, people decide on the meta-level for factual reasons, but mostly out of habit, habit or minor occasions.

"Rational appeals do not help to lead the conflict between healthy lifestyles and laziness". This has already been proven by behavioral science in several scientific papers. Although rational judgments need to be faster to succeed, "the habit prevails because it works without further consideration." People do not always have to think in order to find their way into their own four walls, the authors justify the "habit man".

External events change habits
It would be more effective if the way to the desired decision was simplified by external influences. So new and healthier habits could replace old ones. The possibilities for influencing are "sheer endless", says Marteu. These range from a more respectable presentation of healthy products and their quickly achievable placement in the canteen or shopping market to the transformation of the architectural texture of office buildings, "which invites more active movement in the breaks".

Narrow glasses tempt you to drink less
In one study, it turned out that just turning off the elevators or slowing the closing of the elevator doors, many more people used the stairs. Even drinking thin glasses showed that the subjects drank less than with wide glasses of the same volume. When the salad bar was positioned closer to the seats and the dessert area moved farther back, more people use the salad bar to eat healthy food.

Thus, the behavior could unconsciously be controlled to a much healthier lifestyle. The sometimes exhausting conflict between the wishes and the meaningful must then not be conducted. (Sb)

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