Automatic for the People:

Changing environments to change population health behaviour outside awareness

Much of the global burden of non-communicable disease is caused by unhealthy behaviours that individuals engage in even when informed of their health-harming consequences. To date, interventions to address this have largely encouraged people to reflect on their behaviours. However, these behaviours are often not driven by deliberative conscious decisions, but occur directly in response to environmental cues and without a great deal of conscious reflection. Consequently, interventions that target non-conscious rather than conscious processes to change behaviour may have significant – if largely untested – potential to change population health behaviour. This talk will aim to explore this premise and highlight some relevant current research on the topic.

** Gareth Hollands is a researcher in Psychology at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care (University of Cambridge, UK).