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Reflection Paper On Health

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Reflection Paper Health is such an important factor of our daily lives. Everything we do affects our health, physically, mentally, and emotionally. The question that someone may ask themselves is whether individual behavior is more effective in promoting health or is the structure of the world more effective in promoting health. This topic plays an important role in psychology and is controversial.
A psychotherapist, Dr. Thomas Plante stated the following: “After conducting psychotherapy for three decades working with thousands of patients trying to change their behavior I've given up on the whole willpower thing entirely. Rather, I have found that social engineering tends to work much better than trying to get people to significantly alter their behavior based on impulse control and willpower alone.” (Plante,2012). I believe that social engineering is more likely to be effective in improving population health than an individual trying to alter their behavior on their own. According to lecture, health behaviors are defined as the following, “behaviors undertaken by people to enhance or maintain health” (Lecture 8, slide 3). For example, an individual may choose to alter their diet due to them gaining weight or because of the dissatisfaction of their physical appearance. In this example, the individual chooses to alter their behavior on their own. However, a cafeteria at a school may be organized in a way that displays larger portions of nutritious food, which allows for the individuals to choose a healthier option by default, leading the individual to choose the healthier option. The example in which the cafeteria alters the food, is more effective than an individual altering their own behavior due to choosing. The impact is the structure of the cafeteria, which leads to the changes of an individual's behavior rather than them doing it on their own. In this context it seems to be easier for someone to follow the guidelines set by an institutions than will power, which is argued by Dr. Thomas Plante as well. The cafeteria example demonstrates social engineering, which is defined as the following, “modification of world in order for individuals to have

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