Stok F Marijn, de Ridder Denise T D, de Vet Emely, de Wit John B F
Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.
Br J Health Psychol. 2014 Feb;19(1):52-64. doi: 10.1111/bjhp.12030. Epub 2013 Feb 14.
While healthy eating patterns are of high importance in adolescence, most adolescents portray quite unhealthy eating behaviour. One reason for this may be that social norms among peers tend to be unsupportive of healthy eating. The current study investigates whether communicating health-promoting descriptive and injunctive norms influences adolescents' intended and actual fruit consumption.
The study employed an experimental prospective design.
A norm message manipulation (descriptive vs. injunctive vs. no-norm control) was administered to high school students, after which fruit intake intention (N = 96) was assessed. At follow-up, actual fruit intake over 2 days (N = 80) was recorded.
Adolescents receiving the descriptive norm did not report higher fruit intake intentions than the control group, but did consume (borderline, p = .057) significantly more fruit in the following 2 days (2.3 portions per day) than the control condition (1.7 portion per day). Adolescents receiving the injunctive norm reported lower fruit intake intentions than the other two groups, but actual fruit consumption (1.5 portions per day) was similar to that of the control group.
Health-promoting injunctive norms not only had no positive effects on fruit intake but actually caused a decrease in fruit intake intentions, indicating that injunctive norms may be vulnerable to reactance. A health-promoting descriptive norm was found to positively affect fruit intake in adolescents. No effect on fruit intake intention was found. Results show that simple single-sentence norm messages hold the potential to substantially influence health behaviour.
虽然健康的饮食模式在青少年时期非常重要，但大多数青少年的饮食行为却相当不健康。造成这种情况的一个原因可能是同伴间的社会规范往往不利于健康饮食。本研究调查了传达促进健康的描述性规范和指令性规范是否会影响青少年对水果的预期消费和实际消费。
本研究采用实验性前瞻性设计。
对高中生进行规范信息操纵（描述性规范与指令性规范与无规范对照），之后评估水果摄入意愿（N = 96）。在随访时，记录2天内的实际水果摄入量（N = 80）。
接受描述性规范的青少年报告的水果摄入意愿并不高于对照组，但在接下来的2天里（每天2.3份），他们实际摄入的水果量（接近显著水平，p = 0.057）明显多于对照组（每天1.7份）。接受指令性规范的青少年报告的水果摄入意愿低于其他两组，但实际水果摄入量（每天1.5份）与对照组相似。
促进健康的指令性规范不仅对水果摄入量没有积极影响，实际上还导致水果摄入意愿下降，这表明指令性规范可能容易引发抵触情绪。研究发现，促进健康的描述性规范对青少年的水果摄入量有积极影响。未发现对水果摄入意愿有影响。结果表明，简单的单句规范信息有可能对健康行为产生重大影响。
