HOW TO MAINTAIN HEALTH-PROMOTING BEHAVIORS: THE ROLE OF ACTION PLANS AND SELF-EFFICACY

Health behaviors have a profound effect on health. Besides welldocumented relations between health behaviors, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer, there is a growing body of evidence that certain health behaviors are related to neurogenesis. Health behavior change may be defined as a process, consisting of the intention formation, an initiation and maintenance of a health behavior, and finally relapses. Social-cognitive variables, such as action plans and self-efficacy are among key facilitators of the initiation, maintenance and recovery from relapses. The role of these variables may be phase-specific: some variables (i.e., action planning) may play a profound role only in certain phases (i.e., the initiation and maintenance), remaining irrelevant in other phases. Different types of self-efficacy promote initiation, maintenance, and recovery form lapses. The paper discusses studies showing effects of action planning and phase-specific self-efficacy on health behavior change among young healthy adults, patients after myocardial infarction and people with overweight or obesity.