The greatest scientific discoveries of the last century were in the fields of medicine, physics and electronics. The greatest scientific advances of the next millennium will involve understanding the most confounding problem in the galaxy … namely human behavior.
Can humans evolve and change themselves and their behavior toward healthier pursuits? From sedentary lifestyles, poor diets and smoking all the way to guns and violence in our schools, the biggest threat to our health as a nation is our own behavior. The most challenging scientific problem we now face is understanding human behavior. Our technology has evolved at an incredible pace, is it possible to push the evolutionary curve when it comes to human behavior?
The greatest evidence for change comes from our own history. Human beings are not the same as they used to be. When was the last time you ate a mastodon leg? Our ancestors used to eat them and if they had not been able to change their diets we would have died out when the mastodons did. When the automobile came along we changed our lifestyles again. We used to think owning slaves was a good idea – we changed our minds and then changed our laws and finally changed our behavior. Willful deliberate evolution of social values is possible. It may take a million years to evolve a fish, but humans have the ability to adapt like no other creature. But … can we evolve and change ourselves to keep up with our own rapidly evolving technologies?

Theories of Behavior Change

In order to understand behavior change, various models have been examined. The consensus in the field of behavior change is that change must take place on a number of levels, from the level of personal change to community and social levels. A number of models that address personal aspects of behavior change often overlook the important mental aspects of behavior change that are based in self-mastery or self-efficacy theory. Self-efficacy theory asserts that the initiation of and persistence at behavior change are determined by judgments and expectations concerning skills needed to successfully cope with a rapidly changing world. Lack of confidence in the ability to change, for whatever reason, translates into a low probability that a person will make any change. If we can change one behavior successfully, we increase confidence in making other changes. In other words, if we believe we can change one aspect of our unhealthy lifestyles, then we will change that and other healthy behavior changes will follow. Are we ready as a society to make changes that will improve our world?

Self Efficacy: Taking control of your Life

The belief that change is possible is the first step. Our confidence in ourselves to master a new skill or lifestyle has become an important variable in research. The influence of self-efficacy on the adoption, initiation, and maintenance of healthy behaviors is being examined by many researchers.
The Drug Abuse Treatment Outcome Study (DATOS) addressed the relationship between the perceived ability to change a behavior (self-efficacy) and the ability to overcome that behavior (cocaine and alcohol use) in an outpatient drug abuse treatment program. Both behavior change during treatment and maintenance of the change after treatment were studied. This study recruited 2,535 volunteers to participate. The 784 who remained after 3 months reported during each face-to-face interview their drug and alcohol use and their self-efficacy concerning drug use resistance. Self-efficacy was predictive of subsequent drug and alcohol use at 1 and 3 months. The more the subjects believed they could change, the more they did.

An Active, Vigorous Life or Sloth and Gluttony

Which behaviors need changing may be debatable, yet there are some that are universally agreed upon … like the need to engage in regular physical activity. Physical activity is an area of health behavior that encourages people to become more active in other areas of their lives that may also need healthy changes. People who are physically active have been shown to smoke less and generally be more active socially. Spending more time actively involved with our own communities and less time watching TV and playing video games has the potential to affect our civilization in a positive way.
The 1996 Physical Activity and Health: A Report of the Surgeon General summarized the important message that the population in the United States can substantially improve their health and quality of life by making moderate amounts of physical activity a part of everyday life. However, one fourth of Americans continue not to exercise. This problem is destined to get worse as time goes by and the population ages, unless we make a conscious decision to be active in our world. Physical activity levels decline predictably with age. Twenty percent of us are sedentary when young and this has grown to 50% of our nation’s population reporting no leisure-time physical activity in older age groups where fitness levels may mean the difference between a fully functional independent lifestyle and frailty, disability and disease. As medical costs rise, preventative measures such as exercise become increasingly important in all age groups.
By improving physical condition, quality of life is elevated in those who are physically active. Sleep patterns are improved and anxiety is reduced with even light physical training. This exercise-induced elevation of mood, as it relates to depression and anxiety, has a favorable effect upon an individual’s health and on how we ultimately relate to the world around us. This can eventually translate to decreased health care visits and reduced health care costs because of lessened disease and improved physical condition.

Small Changes Can make a Big Difference

The importance of changing one small aspect of behavior toward a healthy lifestyle can have ripple effects in many other areas of our society.
Small changes are easier to make than big changes in all areas of health. When it comes to physical activity, small changes can produce big results. People who are usually inactive can enhance their well-being and improve their health by simply increasing their activity levels to moderate amounts. They take control in one area and translate that to other areas of their life. Major diseases or conditions which improve by incorporating moderate levels of physical activity into daily life include cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes myelitis, arthritis, osteoporosis, balance problems, and obesity. If you want to improve our world, you’ll have to stay healthy to do it.

The Stages of Change

Recent research on physical activity interventions is successfully using a stages of change research model for changing health behavior. Current thought is that change occurs in stages rather than all at once. One study examined exercise behavior change to assess the relationship between stage of change and the constructs of self-efficacy, processes of change, and the decisions we make. A five-stage process related to a person’s readiness to change: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action and maintenance was used. The perception of mastery (self-efficacy) was found to significantly increase from the precontemplation stage on up to the maintenance stage. Using this model we have seen effective behavior change campaigns in stopping smoking programs and AIDS education and can be adopted to making positive changes in a variety of health issues.

Can We Evolve to be Anything More Than Chimpanzees

Jane Goodall, the National Geographic researcher who spent years studying
the chimpanzees in Africa, at first found them to be an almost ideal little society. Like one big extended family, they shared food and resources with little confrontation. After a number of years, however, she observed them splitting into two groups. Before long, they had organized war parties – seeking out and even killing members of the opposing group – behavior that is frighteningly human. In recent years we have armed with semi automatic weapons many people who seem to be no more evolved than those chimpanzees and then we are shocked when they open fire at a school or a theatre, nightclub or on the Vegas strip.
In the last century, the scientific debate centered around Darwin’s thesis that we had evolved from the ape. The next big scientific question is “will humans will ever evolve to being anything more than just apes?” and “Can we deliberately evolve modern lifestyles into wholesome pursuits that promote a physically and mentally healthier society?” There is a moral imperative to answering this with a resounding “Yes!”