Thank You Card #13
Throughout grad school I’ve spent a good deal of time studying persuasion, with a focus on health-related behavior change. One of the theoretical tools with which I’ve become familiar is the transtheoretical model (TTM, Prochaska, DiClemente, & Nordcross, 1992). The TTM is a framework used to measure and predict behavior change based on an analysis of behavioral patterns of effective psychotherapeutic practices. It consists of four constructs: stages of change (where you are along the process of behavior change), processes of change (or how it is that you’re moving from one stage to another), decisional balance (weighing pros and cons of change), and self-efficacy (confidence in your ability to change). This model lends itself beautifully to longitudinal research—i.e., following a cohort of wanna be behavior changers over time through the stages. I spent an ultra-fun week writing a seminar paper about how exciting it would be to design a series of persuasive messages based on each process and implement them in sequence to encourage staged change, but eh, no one’s going to do that because it’s a big, resource intensive project that would take forever. It’s much more common for studies to focus on a snapshot in time to confirm that people in specific stages are, in fact, reporting use of the processes that the TTM says should correspond to the stage they’re in. BORING! Clinical work is kinda cool, as practitioners often build and test “stage appropriate” interventions to facilitate behavior change.
Anyhow, I’ve decided to approach writing about Thank You Card #13 from a transtheoretical model perspective, and so I’m going to walk anyone who’s brave enough to keep reading through a case study of behavior change over time. It’s not gonna be that boring, I promise.
Precontemplation (Stage 1) to Contemplation (Stage 2). I’ve always loved animals, and at a fairly early age it became difficult for me to disassociate meat on a plate from a cow grazing in the pasture, or a little pig rolling in the mud (or playing video games). In TTM terms this process is called consciousness raising, where you gain an understanding about the ways in which a behavior has a negative impact on your life. In my case it was achieving an awareness of animals such that I could no longer feel okay eating them. It made me quite sad. So when I was 13, I made two huge decisions that I believed would help animals: I would get a dolphin tattoo on my ankle (hmm…), and I would go vegetarian. However, I was thwarted by my Mom, who refused to give the rubber stamp of approval to either one of these decisions until I was 18 years old. I believe she had the idea that these choices were merely the impulses of youth, and by 18 I would no longer even remember I had wanted to ink up or become herbivorous. It pains me to say that yes…she was right. Er, at least, she was right about the tattoo. And by “pains me” I mean I’m forever in debt to her for her infinite motherly wisdom.
Preparation (Stage 3): Preparation involves both the cognitive effort of planning to change, and the behavioral aspect of making adjustments. Basically, you start turning your intention into actual behavioral change (behavior change lite). Often, this involves the process of self-reevaluation, where you start to consider how your life would be if you changed X behavior. For me, I never shook the desire to be vegetarian. In fact, let’s face it, when you’re 13 and your Mom tells you not to do something, it makes you want to do it even more! Over the next four years, I did enough research into why to change my diet—animal rights reasons, health reasons, environmental reasons—to know it was right for me. Furthermore, I’d read enough to understand how my diet could be even healthier once I became vegetarian. Finally, I went vegetarian days at a time to see how it fit my lifestyle and discovered it felt natural. Corresponding to the process of self-liberation, in which you experience increased belief in your ability to commit to change, I could easily see myself as a vegetarian.
Action (Stage 4): You can stay in the preparation stage of behavior change forever and never move into the action stage, wherein you fully commit to behavior modification. Yeah, I’m going to start going to the gym…next week. I’m going to stop smoking….after the holidays. I want to, but eh… Whatever it is, people find all sorts of reasons to put off hard-to-change behavior because…it’s hard to change. Then there are cases like mine, where I had the motivation and the knowledge to change my diet, I just needed a little push. That push came from Tom Arnold, comedian extraordinaire. (Yes, Tom Arnold factors into my life in an important, meaningful way. Who else can say that?).
I’d stayed up late one Friday night watching Conan O’Brien. His last guest was Tom Arnold, and I don’t know how they got onto this topic, but Tom Arnold started talking about a job he had at a meatpacking plant spiking pig heads on stakes as they passed him on an assembly line. Bright and early the next morning, I went to my job working the grill of a snack bar at an ice skating rink and it seemed like every single person ordered extra bacon on his or her breakfast sandwich. I kept trying to get the idea of pig heads on stakes out of my head but it was like Wegner’s white bear study: “I’d like extra bacon on that” wait.. bacon…don’t think of pig heads on stakes, don’t think of pig heads on stakes – Damn it! Pig heads on stakes! Wait, wait… think other thoughts, okay… “Extra bacon?” Not again…Pig heads…OMG WTF? Although I can’t remember the last time I actually ate meat, I do recall the first time I actively chose not to: I was at a diner with my friends later that night after a show our bands had played and I ordered blueberry pancakes instead of a cheeseburger. Simple as that.
Maintenance (Stage 5). In the maintenance stage, you just keep at your new behavior (or lack of behavior, since I’d say the lion’s share of TTM studies concern quitting a negative behavior as opposed to starting a positive one). I’ve found that over the past 12 years, following a vegetarian diet has been easy for me. (It can be hard for people who actually enjoy meat to give up eating it, but since I never did, eh…). However, in going through this practice of applying the TTM to my own life, I can see how I utilized a lot of the processes that help people maintain behavior change. For instance, through the process of social liberation, people make social changes that support their healthy behavior (this, plus my $4.75/hour pay rate were catalysts for quitting the ice rink job). Additionally, people typically form new relationships that support healthy behavior; if I recall, it was about six months after I went vegetarian that I started dating this cute guy Tom, who soon switched to a vegetarian diet as well.
Termination (Stage 6): The transtheoretical model was revised to conclude the termination stage, where people have completed the change process and are not at risk to return to their previous behavior. In this stage, individuals feel no temptation to relapse and have complete efficacy to maintain their new behavior. Actually, among behavior change scholars and practitioners, the termination phase is a bit controversial because the TTM is so often applied to addictive behaviors (e.g., drug use), where for a number of reasons (e.g., physiological or neurological changes), people may not ever move from maintenance to termination. I would say that I’m in the termination stage though. I find it easy to be vegetarian, and in fact, I feel that this diet’s restrictions has broadened my palate.
Anyhow, even though I just rambled for a gazillion words about not eating animals, Thank You Card #13 went to a place called the 8 Oz Burger Bar in South Beach, Miami. I can’t even hazard a guess to how many animals are served there each day, but I can tell you that they make THE BEST VEGGIE BURGER I’VE EVER HAD. Between January 1998 until the present day of August 2010 is about 611 weeks. Let’s say I’ve had, on average, about a veggie burger per week—that’s more than 600 over the past 12 years. And this was THE BEST ONE. First of all, it was a homemade blend of grains and vegetables topped with cheddar cheese, arugula, sunflower seeds, tomato, onion, and avocado and it just flat out tasted good. Marvel at it in all its glory:
Second, part of what made it so exceptional was that we were only in town for a day, and though we’d read that this veggie burger was great, we went there for lunch expecting nothing special—maybe just a Boca burger cooked the same as any other burger, which would have been fine. It exceeded our expectations. The place itself was cool, too, with a lot of good beer on tap, a subscription to MLB Extra Innings, weekly Rock Band competitions (too bad we missed this. We woulda killed it!), and a waiter who recommended cool nightspots (though we watched the Yankees beat the Red Sox on our hotel room’s flatscreen instead). I appreciated the total experience, and the fact that their veggie burger was a menu option into which they’d clearly invested time and thought so that vegetarians could enjoy an amazing burger, too.
Plus…open until 5 am daily? Rad.
