Representations of health risks: What social psychology can offer health promotion

Abstract

This paper proposes that health promotion may benefit from a social psychological theory that maps the contents and evolution of lay `logic'. Social representations theory forms the focus, since it facilitates entry into people's meaning systems regarding risks, as well as into the functions served by such meanings. The theory is assessed once the assumptions of the more commonly used, contrasting perspective of risk perception is examined. Cognitive theories of risk perception tend to focus on an ideal of rational information processing and assume that people are averse to harm. They are unified in their centre of attention being the intrapersonal level. Having looked at studies of lay responses to childhood vaccination, diabetes and smoking, the paper demonstrates that such assumptions can be challenged. Social representations theory is summoned as a unifying rubric in which to conduct studies that operate from wholly different assumptions: the history and symbols held dear within particular social networks fashion their representations of the health issues they face. These are difficult to change because they serve an identity protective function, rather than being products of faulty information processing which can be rectified by way of a dose of'reality'. However, at least by mapping the evolution and contents of such representations one can help health promoters in starting with where audiences are located, rather than operating from models of behaviour change that are underpinned by assumptions that have limited validity.