Expectancy-Value models of health behaviour: the role of salience and anticipated affect

Expectancy-value models of health behaviour are based upon the assumption that this behaviour is determined by a subjective cost-benefit analysis. Generally, these models emphasize cognitive appraisal processes focusing on the likelihood and evaluation of the consequences of health-related behavioural practices. A first potential shortcoming of applications of these models concerns their neglect of the cognitive limitations of the human decision maker. This is reflected in the tendency to incorporate many possible costs and benefits when assessing individual attitudes. We propose that the concept “dimensional salience” could help to assess the individual's he of reference within which behavioural alternatives are judged, and help to provide a more realistic description of the individual decision making process that takes account of the limitations of our information processing capacity. A second shortcoming of expectancy-value approaches concerns the limited attention paid to the anticipation of post-behavioural affective consequences. We propose a model explicitly incorporating these anticipatory feelings. The model combines elements of one of the prevailing expectancy-value models (Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour) with the notions of salience and anticipated affect Both salience and anticipated affect could help to understand the structure of beliefs underlying attitudes and behaviour. Finally, we briefly summarize our approach and discuss some implications for research attempting to predict and explain health-related behaviours.