Department of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, UK.
Psychol Health. 2010 Sep;25(7):885-72. doi: 10.1080/08870440902929528.
It has been suggested that autonomy promotes enhanced reflection on novel information and reduces defensive or biased information processing. This study investigated how autonomy affected people's reactions to known versus novel health-risk information in relation to three behaviours: sun exposure, alcohol consumption and salt intake. Participants (N=321) completed a measure of autonomy, read either known or novel health-risk information and reported their relative autonomous motivation, attitudes, perceived behavioural control, subjective norm and intentions towards reducing the health-risk behaviour concerned. In line with our hypotheses, the results showed that higher autonomy participants reported greater relative autonomous motivation towards reducing health-risk behaviours than did lower autonomy participants; this effect was mediated by perceptions of the information as less freedom-threatening. The expected interaction between Autonomy and Information Type was not observed. The results indicate that autonomy is associated with greater relative autonomous motivation to engage in health behaviours, and that autonomous motivation may subsequently influence intentions to reduce health-risk behaviour following exposure to health-risk information.
有人认为自主性促进了对新信息的深入思考，并减少了防御性或有偏见的信息处理。本研究调查了自主性如何影响人们对已知和新颖健康风险信息的反应，涉及三种行为：阳光照射、饮酒和盐摄入量。参与者（N=321）完成了自主性测量，阅读了已知或新颖的健康风险信息，并报告了他们对减少相关健康风险行为的相对自主动机、态度、感知行为控制、主观规范和意图。与我们的假设一致，结果表明，自主性较高的参与者报告说，他们减少健康风险行为的相对自主动机比自主性较低的参与者更强；这种效应是由信息被视为较少威胁自由的感知所介导的。自主性和信息类型之间预期的交互作用没有观察到。结果表明，自主性与参与健康行为的相对自主动机更强相关，并且自主动机可能随后影响接触健康风险信息后减少健康风险行为的意图。
