Resources
There are so many great resources for learning about health psychology, health behavior, and other relevant psychology topics. Here are links to a few of our favorites…
The Association for Psychological Science is one of my favorite sources for up-to-the-minute research summaries, links to coverage in the popular press, and mini-bios of important psychological researchers. Pretty much every time I log on, I learn something new and interesting. Don’t miss this one!
[http://www.psychologicalscience.org/]
The Society for Behavioral Medicine is perhaps not the best place for easily-accessible information on the science of health behavior, but it’s a good portal to well-respected journals that are full of innovative and important research on health behavior. Also, SBM’s policy statements are well-supported by data, and definitely worth checking out. All in all, if you have a few minutes, it’s worth digging through the site. There are some gems if you look!
[http://www.sbm.org/outlook/1014/]
If you haven’t heard of Dan Ariely, you need to check out this site, and probably read one of his books. He’s a master of explaining psychological research in a way that’s completely accessible and always interesting. As one of my academic colleagues says, “He’s a rock star”. I agree.
As a member of APA, I probably should be more excited about the APA’s website. It’s actually not bad, but it’s not my favorite. In my opinion, it can feature research that’s not always the most rigorous. But having said that, there are some great resources on the site, not the least of which is (ironically!) the portal to some of the best and most selective social science journals out there. Come here to find links to The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Health Psychology, Psychological Bulletin and others. Just reading the abstracts alone for these publications can keep me entertained for hours. It’s all very interesting, and even those journals with non-health related titles have a surprising amount of health-related research. So don’t let the slightly cheesy stock photos on APA’s site fool you. There is plenty of good stuff here if you take the time to look for it!
I’ve included here a link specifically to Health Psychology because it’s a journal with rigorous scientific standards and the topics are exclusively health-focused. Just a little walk through the table of contents for their recent issues will keep you reading and may make you head to your nearest university library to read the full-text articles.
[http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/hea/]
This is the website for the Social Psychology Network, an interesting resource that’s managed by a psychologist at Wesleyan University. It covers all things social psychology related, and it is chock full of links to related sources. If you’re wondering why a health psychologist cares about social psychology, it’s because social psychology and personality psychology are incredibly important fields of study when it comes to understanding health behavior. Trust me – once you start reading even just the titles of social psychology papers, you’ll see the implications for health behavior. Just as an example, think about motivation. Don’t most of in health behavior wonder how to motivate people to take better care of their bodies? Don’t we often wish we ourselves could be more motivated to adhere to challenging health behaviors? Well, motivation is studied extensively in social psychology and some of the most well–supported theories of motivation were “born” in social psychology and have been successfully applied to health behaviors.
[https://www.socialpsychology.org/]
The Society for Personality and Social Psychology has a fantastic website. It may be one of my favorites, in no small part because the blog page is wonderful. I recently tweeted a great post on self-affirmation because the writer did a fantastic job of explaining why self-affirmation is such an effective way to reduce defensive processing. Even though the blog didn’t specifically mention health messaging, the writing was clear and anyone wishing to understand the process behind self-affirmation would easily be able to apply the concepts to health. Bottom line: Don’t miss it.