Content area
Full Text
WHILE controversy surrounds how useful gene identification and manipulation will prove to be in managing and preventing a significant number of behavioural disorders (Holtzman & Marteau, 2000), few psychologists would deny the role of genes in influencing behaviour. One application in clinical practice is likely to involve the use of DNA analyses to estimate vulnerability to a disorder. Individuals may therefore be given personalised information, based on analysis of their DNA and other risk factors, about the chances of developing a condition such as dementia or depression. But as Plomin points out, interventions to avoid or manage such complex psychological traits are likely to involve environmental rather than gene manipulation.
Providing risk information in order to motivate individuals to reduce their risks of health problems is not new, although the type of information given will be novel, namely based on DNA. There is now a large literature showing that the provision of risk information alone can be distressing (Shaw et al., 1999) and is rarely sufficient to achieve behaviour change (Croyle, 1995).
Theoretically based studies in health psychology point to the importance of three key variables in motivating and achieving behaviour change: feeling personally vulnerable to a threat; belief that a behaviour will reduce that threat; and feeling confident that performing the behaviour is within the individual's control (Corner & Norman, 1996). There is now a small but growing body of evidence showing how these and other cognitions can be altered to achieve behaviour change (see e.g. Orbell et al., 1997). Combining these with established behavioural techniques could lead to powerful methods of facilitating behaviour change following the provision of risk information. The first step in this is to understand the likely impact of DNA-based risk assessments on salient cognitions.
How individuals combine risk information from different sources seems to be key in influencing their perceptions of vulnerability. Motivation to change behaviour is also influenced by the representations of individual risk factors, in particular how controllable they are perceived to be. These points are illustrated below using examples from studies of...