Posted on 10/19/2012 7:18:16 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
(CNN) -- Would you be more likely to take the stairs if the elevator doors were slower to close? Would you be more likely to eat healthy foods if the unhealthy selections were harder to reach?
You might -- and you might not even be aware of it.
Humans, as well as other animals, are motivated to conserve energy and have a built-in preference for the shortest or easiest way of doing something over a longer or more difficult way.
Our behavior is guided by two systems: a reflective system, in which we act in a conscious way, working toward goals while aware of our motivations and actions; and an automatic system, in which we act without reflection, responding to our surroundings and performing behaviors we have performed countless times before.
Targeting automatic behaviors could be a key way to fight disease.
Worldwide, more than half of deaths are due to four diseases: cancer, heart disease, diabetes and chronic respiratory disease.
The main causes of those are smoking, overeating, excessive alcohol consumption and a sedentary lifestyle. It's estimated that 75% of diabetes and heart disease cases and 40% of cancers would be prevented by changing the behaviors that cause them.
Past approaches have focused on persuading people of the risks faced by not changing behavior -- not curbing their drinking, for instance, or increasing their physical activity.
But even if the risks are personalized, evidence has shown, such information has little or no impact on behavior.
More intensive behavioral programs, those aimed at weight loss or stopping smoking, are more effective. But their effect is still limited, as only a small proportion of those who might benefit enroll in these programs, and of those who do, only a minority succeed in changing their behavior.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
My daughter was working out at the gym twice a day, but would drive around a parking lot three or four times to park close to the store so she wouldn’t have to walk far. Never understood that logic. LOL
No wonder CNN is consistently the “third name in news” . . .
Fitness buff or not, long walks through parking lots are often not particularly safe for women, regardless of time of day.
Nanny State PING!
While we’re suggesting nanny-state methods of controlling the population, how about banning the use of TV remote controls, forcing viewers to get up off the couch to change the channel.
That way, nobody would ever tune in to CNN.
Yeah, we’re just brute beasts who shuffle along, bearing toward the path of least resistance—the slower-closing elevator door and all, driving us unthinkingly toward the stairs...
“but would drive around a parking lot three or four times to park close to the store so she wouldn’t have to walk far.”
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I love it ! :-)
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Funny how CNN is based in Atlanta...as is the CDC .... Centers for Drug Control
These freaking dweebs have been lying to us all for years!
(yes, that was '/s')
Boy-howdy, are we close to that kind of scenario!
I guess they’ve never seen me make scaffolding out of items in my grocery cart in order to reach the last remaining bag of Chili Cheese Fritos on the top shelf at the grocery...
“Worldwide, more than half of deaths are due to four diseases: cancer, heart disease, diabetes and chronic respiratory disease.”
—
And if we eliminate these four culprits we’ll all die of something else.Do they think we’re fools?
.
CNN says I should be dead by now.
Thanks for the ping!
Reminds me of something I noticed during a public transit strike. I commuted by bicycle and every morning passed a fitness club in the Financial District that was full of people who would drive downtown early every morning then spend an hour riding stationary bicycles.
This sounds like something out of the Cass Sunstein book, Nudge.
I am all in favor of health. I am not in favor of my government forcing me, or nudging me, to do what “they” decide are healthy things.
I still run like I am on active duty, and drink moderately. Healthy enough for me.
That’s very true, but I don’t think it was a safety issue for her.:)
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