My research interests focus broadly on the how people
reason about themselves and the environments in which they
live and how these inferences guide people's behavioral
decisions.
Although this general interest has led to collaborations
with colleagues in a range of areas (e.g., stereotyping,
public policy), my research program is primarily comprised
of a synthesis of basic research on how people process
health information with the development and evaluation
of theory-based interventions to promote healthy behavior.
The overarching goal of this work is to simultaneously
advance our understanding of psychological theory (e.g.,
models of behavioral decision-making) and the design of
behavioral interventions. In recognition of my work in
this area, I received the 2002 Distinguished Scientific
Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology in the
area of Health Psychology from the American Psychological
Association.
The research currently conducted in my lab can be organized
around three general questions: (1) “How do people
form beliefs about their own health as well as the health
status of others?”: Research in this area examines
how people process and attend to risk-relevant information,
how the types of goals people hold affect their ability
make changes in their behavior, how people assess the outcomes
associated with changes in their behavior, and how stereotypes
about illnesses influence the likelihood of recognizing
a health problem. (2) “What is the most effective
way to provide people with health information?”:
For example, we have been conducting a on-going series
of studies (in both the laboratory and the field) that
delineate how providing people with either gain- or loss-framed
information about their health influences the likelihood
of their adopting a behavior. (3) “How do people's
beliefs about their health guide the decision they make,
and how do these decisions in turn influence their beliefs?”:
In collaboration with colleagues in the school of public
health, I lead a federally-funded initiative that examines
the decision process that guide people's efforts either
to manage their weight or to quit smoking. In this work,
we are particularly interested in understanding whether
the factors that enable people to initiate a change in
their behavior are different from those that enable them
to maintain those changes over time.
Rothman, A.J., & Salovey, P.
(1997). Shaping perceptions to motivate healthy behavior:
The role of message framing. Psychological Bulletin, 121,
3-19.
Salovey, P., Rothman, A.J., & Rodin, J. (1998). Health
behavior. In D. Gilbert, S. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.),
The handbook of social psychology (4th edition), (Vol 2,
pp. 633-683). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Weinstein, N.D., Rothman, A.J., & Sutton, S.R. (1998).
Stage theories of health behavior. Health Psychology, 17,
290-299.
Rothman, A.J., & Kiviniemi, M. (1999). “Treating
people with health information”: An analysis and
review of approaches to communicating health risk information.
Journal of the National Cancer Institute Monographs, 25,
44-51.
Rothman, A.J., Martino, S.C., Bedell, B.T., Detweiler,
J.B., & Salovey, P. (1999). The systematic influence
of gain- and loss-framed messages on people's interest
in and use of different types of health behaviors. Personality
and Social Psychology Bulletin, 11, 1355-1369.
Rothman, A.J. (2000). Toward a theory-based analysis of
behavioral maintenance. Health Psychology, 19, 64-69.
Rothman, A.J., Haddock, G., & Schwarz, N. (2001). “How
many partners is too many?”: Shaping perceptions
of vulnerability. Journal of Applied Social Psychology,
31, 2195-2214.
King, C.M., Rothman, A.J., & Jeffery, R.W. (2002).
The challenge study: Theory based interventions for smoking
and weight loss. Health Education Research (Special issue:
Health Behavior Change Research: Theory Comparison and
Multiple Behavior Research from the NIH Behavior Change
Consortium), 17, 522-530.
Rothman, A.J., Kelly, K.M., Hertel, A., & Salovey
P. (2002). Message frames and illness representations:
Implications for interventions to promote and sustain healthy
behavior. In L.D. Cameron & H. Leventhal (Eds.), The
self-regulation of health and illness behavior (pp. 278-296).
London, UK: Routledge.
Rothman, A.J., Baldwin, A., & Hertel, A. (in press).
Self-regulation and behavior change: Disentangling behavioral
initiation and behavioral maintenance. To appear in K.
Vohs & R. Baumeister (Eds.), The handbook of self-regulation.
Guilford Press: New York, NY.
