Much of the work in my lab focuses on the self-control of health behaviors. Why do reasonable, well-informed individuals who want to behave in healthy ways fail to do so? I seek to answer questions about the conditions under which individuals control their health behaviors, including which individuals will attempt to control their health behaviors and the factors that influence when they will succeed.
It is commonly thought that when people are unable to focus their attention on their goals and behavior, they are likely to lose control - to act in ways that they do not intend or desire. My work (funded by the NIMH) shows that instead of leading to a loss of control, lack of attention simply increases the extent to which people's behavior is influenced by the most noticeable features of their environment. In cases where the environment contains highly salient reminders of one's goals (e.g., a scale as a reminder of a diet), individuals who are distracted may control their behaviors better (e.g., eat less) than if they were not distracted. By viewing self-control as an interaction between attention and the environment, we are able to account for a wide variety of previously unexplained self-control failures - failures that are implicated in a host of health problems, ranging from overeating to drug addiction to sedentary lifestyles.
I have also examined stable individual factors as well as social and cultural factors that influence which people will attempt to control their health behaviors and which people will succeed. One such factor is optimism, and another is the individual difference of approach vs. avoidance orientation. These lines of research suggest important personality and situational factors that moderate the effectiveness of health messages within the context of broader behavior change theories, as well as steps that could be taken by health-care practitioners in delivering messages to promote positive health behaviors.
While I have studied these issues in the context of exercise behavior and medication adherence, I am particularly excited about studying these questions in the areas of eating and dieting. With my graduate students, I am currently exploring the predictors of eating in everyday life as well as the inter-relationships between stress, dieting, and diet failure.
Mann, T. & Ward, A. (in press). Attention, self-control, and health behaviors. Current Directions in Psychological Science.
Parent, S., Ward, A., & Mann, T. (2007). Health information processed under limited attention: Is it better to be "hot" or "cool"? Health Psychology, 26, 159-164.
Mann, T., Tomiyama, A.J., Westling, E., Lew, A., Samuels, B., & Chatman, J. (2007). Medicare's search for effective obesity treatments: Diets are not the answer. American Psychologist, 62, 220-233.
Westling, E., Mann, T., & Ward, A. (2006). The self-control of smoking: When does narrowed attention help? Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 36, 2115-2133.
Lambird, K.M., & Mann, T. (2006). When Do Ego Threats Lead to Self-Regulation Failure? Negative Consequences of Defensive High Self-Esteem. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 1177-1187.
Creswell, J.D., Welch, W.T., Taylor, S.E., Sherman, D.K., Gruenewald, T.L., & Mann, T. (2005). Affirmation of personal values buffers neuroendocrine and psychological stress responses. Psychological Science, 16, 846-851.
Mann, T., & Ward, A. (2004). To eat or not to eat: Implications of the attentional myopia model for restrained eaters. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 113, 90-98.
Mann, T., Sherman, D., & Updegraff, J. (2004). Dispositional motivations and message framing: A test of the congruency hypothesis. Health Psychology, 23, 330-334.
Mann, T. (2001). Effects of future writing and optimism on reported health behaviors in HIV-infected females. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 23, 26-33.
Mann, T., & Ward, A. (2001). Forbidden fruit: Cognitive and behavioral effects of specific food denial. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 29, 319-327.
Ward, A., & Mann, T. (2000). Don't mind if I do: Disinhibited eating under cognitive load. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 753-763.