Health & Fitness - New strategy to reduce unhealthy behaviors

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New strategy to reduce unhealthy behaviors

PHILADELPHIA (UPI) -- Health campaigns to reduce binge drinking and eating junk food often focus on risk but focusing on communities may be more effective, U.S. researchers said.

Study author Jonah Berger of University of Pennsylvania and Lindsay Rand of Stanford University found that linking a risky behavior with an "outgroup" -- a group that the targeted audience doesn't want to be confused with -- caused participants to reduce unhealthy behaviors.

The studies began by identifying groups of people who study participants liked, but with whom the participants wouldn't want to be confused -- "outgroups." In the first study, the participants were undergraduates and the "outgroup" was graduate students. When participants were led to believe that graduate students consumed more junk food, they chose 28 percent fewer junk-food items than participants who thought their group ate more junk food.

In another study, researchers placed fliers in freshman dormitories emphasizing the health risks of binge drinking. In another dorm, the fliers linked binge drinking to graduate students. Participants in the dorm with the second flier consumed at least 50 percent less alcohol than those who saw the health risk fliers.

The findings are published in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International

This news arrived on: 08/25/2008

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