Recap:

Main Lessons
From Seventh Stop in Your Learning Journey

Group influence behaviour

The School of Health Sciences, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Singapore

Your Learning Points

Congratulations. You have just finished exploring the first leg of you radventure through the behavioural sciences! The concepts might complicated but fret not! Your friends and your learning guide will by your side should you ever need help. That is why we implemented the e-Learning and team-based learning (TBL) approach.

Here are the main learning points below. Click to see more.

Sociological Imagination

The discipline of sociology equips us with the discipline to always try and see things from another's point of view by looking at social factors such as:
1. Gender
2. Ethnicity
3. Age
4. Socio-economic Factors such as Education, Financial Status and Occupation.
The Sociological Imagination can be loosely translated into the word EMPATHY. It enables us to understand first before judging. So theoretically sociological thought when practiced correctly help us detect and get rid of our prejudice.
The Sociological Imagination will allow us to understand the social constraints faced by our patients. Having this knowledge may allow us to come up with a healthcare plan that our future patients

Socialisation

We do not automatically became who we are today. At each stage of our lives we are taught the "rules of society" (social roles) by different groups people or social institutions known as Agents of Socialisation.
One of the most important social roles is Gender Roles which we we look at in Term 2.
The social roles that we are socialised into can be extremely difficult to break free from and these roles may impact on our health.

The Concept of Self as a Social Construct

Meads' various theories of Self suggest that our personality, behaviours are tightly linked to our social environment. This is also true of our health behaviour that influence whether we stay healthy or fall ill.
From, Mead we get the concept of the Generalised Other. This concept help us to understand why some people will unintentionally not give the most truth answer because they are saying what they think another person wants to hear from them. Example, a housewife saying yes to everything a doctor asks because she feel that as a "Weaker" member (lower social status) of society she is supposed to give the doctor what he or she wants to hear.

The Transtheoretical Model of Behavioural Change (TTM)

Behavioural changes are never easy to achieve. It would be nearly impossible to do so if we do not learn a structured means to do so.
The TTM provides a structure by getting us to look at the process of change in 5 stages: Precontemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action, Maintenance, Termination (theoretical endpoint that is almost never achieved).
These stages enable us to help patients create a schedule of behaviour and allow us to see which "stage" they are in so that appropriate activities within these stages can be introduced.
1. For example, if the patient is in the Precontemplation estate, we may have to first get the patients to be aware or even think about change in order to shift them to the Contemplation stage where the first steps of actual change can occur. Alternatively, we may have to stop the engagement as the patients are simply not ready for any change to occur.