Social cognition framework for interpersonal informatics in families

Abstract

This research examined how personal health informatics should be interpersonal. There are two motivations for this research work. First, health disparities are disproportionately burdening low-socioeconomic status households. Second, health behaviors such as physical activity are constrained and facilitated by factors at personal, interpersonal, and community levels. Therefore, to help achieve health equity, health technologies need to help people leverage support from their social environment. Through four in-depth studies and two iterations of software prototypes that I developed, I demonstrated how technologies can catalyze social interactions that help people solidify their health beliefs and attitudes. These interpersonal interactions are marked with the exchange of data and stories that inform people's feelings of adequacy, tasks, emotions, and norms. At the same time, interpersonal interactions satisfy people's innate need for belongingness and facilitate the development of collective efficacy to counter the insurmountable health barriers that people face. Guided by Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), I present a social cognition framework for interpersonal informatics. This framework sheds light on concepts and processes that inform the design of more impactful health systems, especially to enhance health equity. First, I highlight the importance of augmenting health data with stories. While sharing health data informs people's sense of behavioral adequacy, the exchange of stories informs the steps to achieve the behavior of interest, reinforces positive outcomes beliefs, and validates people's health behavior. Furthermore, through interpersonal interactions during storytelling, people satisfied their innate needs for social belongingness. Second, people wield significant agency when they cognitively process their observations of their social environment. People are not passive bodies who can simply be prompted by data and persuaded by stories. Yet, people are not fully autonomous because they are often open to learning from others. Through my empirical findings, I show how technologies can support people to leverage their cognitive abilities optimally and learn from their social environment. Guided by SCT, I identified three cognitive processes that are instrumental in people's experience in attaining positive health outcomes while using interpersonal informatics systems. These processes are in goal setting, reflections, and social modeling. Finally, health behavior is readily constrained by a myriad of barriers that are often intensified by low-socioeconomic status contexts. Thus, human-computer interaction research interest in understanding human limitations should be expanded to understanding the limitations that people face at the societal level. I further argue that interpersonal interactions can be a starting point to develop the collective efficacy for countering the societal impediments of a healthy lifestyle. In conclusion, by researching and designing health technologies that are (1) interpersonal in nature, (2) supportive of human cognition, and (3) seeking to minimize impediments, my dissertation will help advance our understanding of socioecologically-aware computing that is sensitive to the myriad social drivers of a healthy global community.--Author's abstract