Value of a quality label and European healthcare professionals' willingness to recommend health apps: An experimental vignette study.

This study aimed to evaluate healthcare professionals' (HCPs') willingness to recommend health apps presented with versus without the CEN-ISO/TS 82304-2 health app quality label. The study was an experimental vignette study describing 12 short hypothetical scenarios, with Label (absent vs present) as a between and Type of App (prevention vs self-monitoring vs healthcare) and Patient Socioeconomic Status (low vs high) as within-subjects factors. The main outcome measure was HCPs' willingness to recommend apps.

The Development and Characteristics of Planetary Health in Medical Education: A Scoping Review.

Purpose: Climate change, biodiversity loss, and other ecological crises threaten human health globally. The interrelation between human health and ecosystems is addressed in the emerging field of planetary health. Ecological crises have created an urgency to integrate planetary health, including sustainable health care, into medical education.

Health behavior interventions among people with lower socio-economic position: a scoping review of behavior change techniques and effectiveness.

Background: Behavior change interventions can unintendedly widen existing socio-economic health inequalities. Understanding why interventions are (in)effective among people with lower socio-economic position (SEP) is essential. Therefore, this scoping review aims to describe what is reported about the behavior change techniques (BCTs) applied within interventions and their effectiveness in encouraging physical activity and healthy eating, and reducing smoking and alcohol consumption according to SEP.

Self-initiated lifestyle changes during a fasting-mimicking diet programme in patients with type 2 diabetes: a mixed-methods study.

Background: Lifestyle changes, especially regarding diet quality and physical activity, are important in the management of type 2 diabetes (T2D). This mixed-methods study explores self-initiated lifestyle changes in patients with T2D who followed a periodic fasting-mimicking diet (FMD).

Methods: Quantitative data were obtained from the Fasting In diabetes Treatment trial (November 2018 to August 2021) in which 100 participants with T2D, using metformin only or no medication, were randomised to receive a monthly 5-day FMD for twelve months next to usual care, or usual care only.

Dutch GPs' perspectives on addressing obesity: a qualitative study.

Background: Early diagnosis and treatment of obesity in primary care may help to tackle the obesity pandemic. Nonetheless, GPs frequently fail to address obesity and demonstrate limited adherence to guidelines.

Aim: To explore Dutch GPs' perspectives on addressing obesity regarding the following three target behaviours: discussing weight; diagnosing; and referring patients with obesity.

When nudgees become nudgers: Exploring the use of self-nudging to promote fruit intake.

The current study explored (1) the immediate and prolonged effects of self-nudges promoting fruit intake in the home environment, (2) whether the effect of self-nudges on fruit intake persists after self-nudges are no longer used (i.e. a temporal spillover effect) and (3) whether self-nudges can install healthy eating habits that, in turn, explain the temporal spillover effect.

How does nudging the COVID-19 vaccine play out in people who are in doubt about vaccination?

In spite of the growing availability of COVID-19 vaccines, a substantial number of people is reluctant or uncertain about getting the vaccine. Nudges may improve vaccine uptake but it is unclear how this plays out with the experience of autonomous choice, decision competence, decision satisfaction, and being pressured to make a choice. In an online experiment among a representative sample (N = 884), we examined whether a social norm nudge or a default nudge (either or not transparent) was effective in steering the desired choice of making a hypothetical early vaccination appointment as compared to making a later appointment or no appointment.

The effect of transparency on the temporal spillover effect of default nudges.

Previous studies show that the effects of (non-transparent) nudges can spill over to later similar decisions without nudges. In the current study, we aimed to determine whether such nudge temporal spillover effects are affected by making nudges transparent. The latter is recommended to (partly) mitigate ethical concerns surrounding the use of nudges.

Habit formation of preventive behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic: a longitudinal study of physical distancing and hand washing.

Background: Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, physical distancing and hand washing have been used as effective means to reduce virus transmission in the Netherlands. However, these measures pose a societal challenge as they require people to change their customary behaviours in various contexts. The science of habit formation is potentially useful for informing policy-making in public health, but the current literature largely overlooked the role of habit in predicting and explaining these preventive behaviours.

Spatiotemporal variations of public opinion on social distancing in the Netherlands: Comparison of Twitter and longitudinal survey data.

Background: Social distancing has been implemented by many countries to curb the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding public support for this policy calls for effective and efficient methods of monitoring public opinion on social distancing. Twitter analysis has been suggested as a cheaper and faster-responding alternative to traditional survey methods.

Does default organ donation registration compromise autonomous choice? Public responses to a new donor registration system.

Defaults have been shown to increase the number of organ donor registrations but it is unclear whether they violate personal autonomy of the people being registered. The implementation of a new Donor Act in the Netherlands, providing people with the opportunity for active registration before being defaulted, allowed for examining to what extent default registration affects personal autonomy and associated concepts. In an online survey among a representative sample (N = 1259), four groups were compared regarding autonomy, decision-making competence, decision satisfaction, and being pressured to register as a donor: people (1) who had registered their status prior to the Donor Act, (2) who had not yet received an invitation for default registration, (3) who had received an invitation and then registered their choice, and (4) who had received an invitation but took no action and were defaulted into donor registration.

Who accepts nudges? nudge acceptability from a self-regulation perspective.

Background: Public acceptability of nudging is receiving increasingly more attention, but studies remain limited to evaluations of aspects of the nudge itself or (inferred intentions) of the nudger. Yet, it is important to investigate which individuals are likely to accept nudges, as those who are supposed to benefit from the implementation should not oppose it. The main objective of this study was to integrate research on self-regulation and nudging, and to examine acceptability of nudges as a function of self-regulation capacity and motivation.

The Effects of Nudges: One-Shot Only? Exploring the Temporal Spillover Effects of a Default Nudge.

Nudges, such as defaults, are generally found to be effective in guiding immediate behavioural decisions. However, little is known about whether the effect of a nudge can be lasting, meaning that it spills over to subsequent similar choices without the presence of a nudge. In three experiments, we explored the temporal spillover effects of a default nudge.

The effect of nudges on autonomy in hypothetical and real life settings.

Nudges have repeatedly been found to be effective, however they are claimed to harm autonomy, and it has been found that laypeople expect this too. To test whether these expectations translate to actual harm to experienced autonomy, three online studies were conducted. The paradigm used in all studies was that participants were asked to voluntarily participate in a longer version of the questionnaire.

Beyond prevention: Regulating responses to self-regulation failure to avoid a set-back effect.

Despite having good intentions, people fail at times to self-regulate. Most of these instances of everyday self-regulation failure are in themselves trivial. However, the ensuing chain of attributions, thoughts, and subsequent behaviors that people experience after an instance of failure may be detrimental to their long-term self-regulation success.

And How Would That Make You Feel? How People Expect Nudges to Influence Their Sense of Autonomy.

Objective: While nudges are increasingly utilized in public policy settings, their potential threat to autonomous choice is the topic of heated debate. Regardless of the actual effects of nudges on autonomy, the mere perception of nudges as autonomy threatening by the general public or policy makers could negatively influence nudge acceptability. The present online studies examined how people expect (different) nudges to affect their perception of autonomy.

Beyond Discrete Choices - Investigating the Effectiveness of a Proximity Nudge With Multiple Alternative Options.

Nudges are defined as small adjustments in the choice architecture that stimulate desirable behavior. Nudging techniques can be used as a promising policy tool, but research has hardly systematically taken into account the complexity of the situation in which nudges have been implemented. In the current studies, we investigated the effectiveness of a proximity nudge on food choice in a realistic situation with multiple options in the immediate surroundings of the target option.

Healthy diet: Health impact, prevalence, correlates, and interventions.

Objective: To discuss healthy diet from a psychological perspective by considering definitions of healthy diet in terms of consumer understanding; the health effects of specific dietary elements in terms of overweight and (chronic) illness; the prevalence of healthy diet; the psychological and environmental determinants of healthy diet; and the psychological interventions that have been designed to promote healthy diet.

Design: A systematic review of the psychological literature on healthy diet.

Results: Our findings suggest that consumers have a relatively poor understanding of a healthy diet.

Why did I do that? Explaining actions activated outside of awareness.

We review the latest research investigating how people explain their own actions when they have been activated nonconsciously. We will discuss evidence that when nonconsciously activated behavior is unexpected (e.g.

Self-control Predicts Exercise Behavior by Force of Habit, a Conceptual Replication of Adriaanse et al. (2014).

A recent study suggests that habits play a mediating role in the association between trait self-control and eating behavior, supporting a notion of effortless processes in trait self-control (Adriaanse et al., 2014). We conceptually replicated this research in the area of exercise behavior, hypothesizing that these associations would generalize to other self-control related behaviors.

'I ate too much so I must have been sad': Emotions as a confabulated reason for overeating.

Background: Emotional eating (i.e., overeating in response to negative affect) is a commonly accepted explanation for eating behaviors that are not in line with personal eating-norms.

Depletion sensitivity predicts unhealthy snack purchases.

The aim of the present research is to examine the relation between depletion sensitivity - a novel construct referring to the speed or ease by which one's self-control resources are drained - and snack purchase behavior. In addition, interactions between depletion sensitivity and the goal to lose weight on snack purchase behavior were explored. Participants included in the study were instructed to report every snack they bought over the course of one week.

Investigating sex differences in psychological predictors of snack intake among a large representative sample.

Objective: It is often assumed that there are substantial sex differences in eating behaviour (e.g. women are more likely to be dieters or emotional eaters than men).

Better sorry than safe: Making a Plan B reduces effectiveness of implementation intentions in healthy eating goals.

Objective: Implementation intentions (if-then plans) are helpful to health behaviour change. As these plans specify only one goal-directed behaviour for one specific situation, however, their effectiveness may be limited when a planned behaviour is impossible to execute in situ. The present research examines whether and how planning more than one goal-directed response for the same situation ('making a Plan B') affects successful self-regulation of eating behaviour.