Towards an Ideology-Free, Truly Mechanistic Health Psychology.

Bernhard Hommel,Christian Beste

doi:10.3390/ijerph182111126

Abstract

Efficient transfer of concepts and mechanistic insights from the cognitive to the health sciences and back requires a clear, objective description of the problem that this transfer ought to solve. Unfortunately, however, the actual descriptions are commonly penetrated with, and sometimes even motivated by, cultural norms and preferences, a problem that has colored scientific theorizing about behavioral control—the key concept for many psychological health interventions. We argue that ideologies have clouded our scientific thinking about mental health in two ways: by considering the societal utility of individuals and their behavior a key criterion for distinguishing between healthy and unhealthy people, and by dividing what actually seem to be continuous functions relating psychological and neurocognitive underpinnings to human behavior into binary, discrete categories that are then taken to define clinical phenomena. We suggest letting both traditions go and establish a health psychology that restrains from imposing societal values onto individuals, and then taking the fit between behavior and values to conceptualize unhealthiness. Instead, we promote a health psychology that reconstructs behavior that is considered to be problematic from well-understood mechanistic underpinnings of human behavior.

Highlights

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines mental health as a “state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community”. This definition is considered to be scientific in nature, but, as we argue, it reflects at least two normative, ideological premises without any scientific basis
“able to make a contribution to his or her community”, introduce the societal utility of the individual as a criterion for judging her mental health, which renders the concept of mental health an ideological rather than a medical or psychological judgment
We emphasize that this should not be taken to imply that ideologies are illegitimate, or that it is wrong to judge and treat people according to the degree to which their behavior meets normative expectations of societies

Summary

Introduction

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines mental health as a “state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community” This definition is considered to be scientific in nature, but, as we argue, it reflects at least two normative, ideological premises without any scientific basis. The requirement to cope with “the normal stresses of life” is just one of many examples where a normative view is introduced, contrasting what is considered to be the behavior shown by the majority of the population with the behavior of a minority that deviates from the behavioral mean to a degree that is considered problematic This amounts to a definition of what is normal and what is not—i.e., a binary categorization of people according to some necessarily arbitrary criterion, which again is an ideological rather than a medical or psychological judgment. We will try to demonstrate this with respect to the two mentioned premises

Societal Utility as Criterion

Binary Classification

Quo Vadis?