Recap:

Main Lessons
From Eighth 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.

Gender Socialisation

Norms, Stereotypes & Gender Behaviour

As Males or Females, we are programmed to behave in a certain ways. Males are often accorded leadership roles in society whether at work and int he family. Females are often accorded a supporting role within society.
In the examples given above, you can find that patients decision concerning their health may no longer be up to the individuals. In fact, their options will be limited by their social status and the social roles they play.

Society will go to great lengths to ensure stability. To achieve this state, society will programme our behaviour through social status and social roles given to us at birth and while we are functioning within society.
We learn about our social status (rank) and social roles (expected behaviour) through socialisation.
Social status and roles comes with groupings of people and the largets of groupings of people is within the social factor of Gender. Gender refers to the sociological expectation of us to behave as a:
1. 1. 1. 1. Female, or
        Male
Socialisation will programme in certain inequalities that may impact on male and female patients health or health-decisions. Understanding these social inequalities will help us understand our patients better in order to provide better health counselling for them.
We must not under-estimate the power of socialisation in shaping the way our patients (or us) behave or think. To reshape behaviours, we need a better understanding of our patients' social environment and how this impact them as males or females.

Gender Inequality & Health

The resultant impact of Gender socialisation and distribution of social stauses and roles meant that there will be some forms of gender inequality. This "division of roles" may both advantageous or disadvantageous with regards to health decision. For example:
1. 1. 1. 1. As "leaders" of society, Males have access to more resources and will have the financial and political means to deal with health issues. However, as people used to taking the lead, males are less likely to seek help and this may cause medical delays that will complicate medical treatment.
        As "supporting members" of society, the Females are often allocated less political and financial resources which disadvantaged them. However, as they have to provide care to their family, the females would then be more willing to seek help.

Gender & The Transtheoretical Model of Behavioural Change

This week, we look at how we need to have additional social information about our patients in order to make the TTM a workable and efficient model for behavioural change.
The social information about the patient is essential for us to understand WHY patients do not make the "correct" health decision and allow us to explore the "HOW" of shifting the way they think. The Hows would be the strategies that can be supported by the TTM structure.