place great value on good health. Of course, everyone wants good health. But
if you think about some of the people you know, you probably can identifythose who place health at the top of their concerns and those who don ’t.
According to the theory, people who place a high value on their health and
who believe there is something they can do to control their health are theones who watch what they eat, exercise, and get regular checkups. You might
believe that daily exercise leaves you feeling fit and full of energy. But if you
don’t particularly value these effects (especially if you value less-exhausting
activities more), it ’s unlikely you ’ll enroll in a fitness program.
Several investigations find evidence for this reasoning (Norman &
Bennett, 1996; Wallston & Smith, 1994). Internal participants in one studywho placed a high value on health were found to eat more fruits and vegeta-
bles and fewer fatty foods and snacks than either external participants or in-
ternals who did not value physical health (Bennett, Moore, Smith, Murphy, &Smith, 1994). Similar results have been found in studies looking at breast self-
examination (Lau, Hartman, & Ware, 1986) and efforts to stop smoking
(Kaplan & Cowles, 1978). In short, health professionals face two tasks whentrying to get patients to take better care of themselves. Patients must place their
health high on their list of things they value, and they must believe that they
can influence the extent to which they are healthy.
SUMMARY
1. From the day we are born, most of us face tremendous socialization
pressures to take on the gender roles deemed appropriate by society.
Through a combination of operant conditioning and observational learn-ing, boys tend to act like other boys, and girls like other girls. Research
on individual differences in gender-role behavior was originally stifled by
a model that viewed masculinity and femininity as polar opposites. Theandrogyny model sees these as two independent traits and argues that the
most well-adjusted people are those who are androgynous —that is, high
in both masculinity and femininity.
2. Researchers agree that exposure to aggressive models increases a person ’s
likelihood of acting aggressively. Bandura ’s four-step model helps explain
why people sometimes imitate aggressive acts they see and sometimes do not.
Before people imitate aggression, they must attend to the act, recall it, have
the opportunity to engage in the behav ior, and believe the aggression will
lead to rewards. Research from laboratory and long-term field studies indi-
cates that exposure to mass media violence increases aggressive behavior.
3. Like much behavioral research, work on learned helplessness began with
experiments on laboratory animals. Researchers observed that dogs thatlearned they were helpless to escape shock in one situation inappropri-
ately generalized this perception of helplessness to a new situation.
Subsequent research found that humans are also susceptible to this effect.
Research suggests elderly people may adjust better to retirement commu-
nities when they are allowed to retain some control over their situation.
Depression may develop when people perceive a lack of control over an408 CHAPTER 14 The Behavioral/Social Learning Approach