HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY - BELIEF, PAIN AND HEALING

Health Psychology - Belief, Pain and Healing

Health Psychology - Belief, Pain and Healing

Some aspects of our behavioral antecedents are stable for years; other aspects change almost moment to moment. For instance, most of us immediately feel "stupid" after failing a test or making a foolish comment. We may feel attractive at one time and unattractive a little later. Each of us also has public selves and private selves. One may love him/herself in some ways and hate him/herself in others. One's behavioral antecedents may mostly mirror other people's opinions or only one's self-evaluation. Your behavioral antecedents may largely reflect the dictates of a culture, religious teachings, family tradition, or you can create a unique personality based on your own ideals.

The behavioral antecedents is probably primarily learned or acquired, but basic tendencies, such as to like or dislike others or one's self, might be inherited as well. The behavioral antecedents may have conscious and unconscious facets. Surely very few of us would consider even our conscious selves to be perfect. Some think the "self" we know is just a highly verbal part of us that tries to understand our other parts. Obviously, there are many different notions about the self. (Casebeer, 2003)

In fact there are a variety of ways to think about the self. Behavioral antecedents generally refer how we think about ourselves. Behavioral antecedents can also be defined as the totality of a complex, organized, and dynamic system of learned beliefs, attitudes and opinions that each person holds to be true about his or her personal existence. Self-esteem generally refers to how we feel about or how we value ourselves.

Thus behavioral antecedents refers to the general idea we have of ourselves and self-esteem refers to particular measures about components of behavioral antecedents. Some authors even use the two terms interchangeably.

One can not negate the relationship between behavioral antecedents, self-esteem and motivation. It can be supported by a variety of researches, which shows that the behavioral antecedents is, perhaps, the basis for all motivated behaviors. It is the behavioral antecedents that gives rise to possible selves, and it is these possible selves that create the motivation for behavior.

However, Casebeer, makes an important distinction between behavioral antecedents and self-esteem. He suggests behavioral antecedents is related to self-esteem in that

...... people who have good self-esteem have a clearly differentiated behavioral antecedents.... When people know themselves they can maximize outcomes because they know what they can and cannot do. (Casebeer, 2003)

It would seem, then, that one way to impact self-esteem is to obey the somewhat outworn cliché of "Know thyself." (Johnson, 1998)

We develop and maintain our behavioral antecedents through the process of taking action and then reflecting on what we have done and what others tell us about what we have done. We reflect on what we have done and can do in comparison to our expectations and the expectations of others as well as to the characteristics and accomplishments of ...