Psychologists have found that there are many factors which affect a persons health. Some psychologists claim that poverty (Carroll et el), Type A personality (Friedman and Rosenman), Religiosity (Terman) and other lifestyle factors greatly influence health. Aswell as this, further issues which need to be considered are gender, development and culture.
The first issue concerns the assumptions made by the Health models. Such things as the Health Belief Model by Rosenstock 1966 and Locus of Control (Rotter 1960) highlight this issue. Since the HBM claims to be able to predict certain behaviour based on a series of self-assessments, it can never fully be accurate because it tends to see humans as rational processors of information, when in reality we are much more complicated, emotional and irrational. …
