Lewin's Exhortation and the Study of Health Behavior Change

The degree to which behavioral practices contribute to current rates of disease morbidity and premature mortality is a staggering practical problem.  Although investigative efforts to identify the processes that underlie people's behavioral decisions are guided, at least in part, by the promise that the theoretical principles that emerge from this work will inform efforts to address practical problems, innovations in social psychological theory too often remain disconnected from the development of intervention strategies to promote healthy behavioral practices.  What should we conclude from this state of affairs?  Was Lewin wrong to claim that there is "nothing so practical as a good theory"?  In my presentation, I will assert that Lewin was correct, but that the "practical" value of our theoretical models critically depend upon feedback between theory and application.  In order to illustrate this point, I will describe a series of intervention studies (in the domains of smoking cessation and weight loss) that were designed not only to improve how people regulate changes in their behavior over time, but also to test a series of predictions derived from a new model of behavioral decision making.  Specifically, these studies examine the premise that the decision criteria that lead people to initiate a change in their behavior are distinct from those that lead them to maintain that pattern of behavior over time.