Pender s Health Promotion Model Behavior Specific Cognitions and Affect
When nurses try to encourage patients to engage in health promoting behavior, Nola J. Pender’s Health Promotion Model (HPM) can play an important role in how to approach the issue. ... Behavior-specific cognitions and affect constitute the category of variables within the HPM which are subject to intervention through nursing actions. These variables include perceived benefits of action, perceived barriers to action, perceived self-efficacy, activity-related affect, interpersonal influences, and situational influences. Review of the Literature A person’s intentions to engage in health promoting behavior often depend on the benefits that he/she expects to obtain as a result of this behavior. Pender refers to this as perceived benefits of action. The experience of prior-related behavior, whether direct personal or vicarious, has significant importance on the motivation of a person to engage in health promoting behavior (Pender, 1996). Perceived barriers to action, according to Pender, also affect intentions to engage in a particular behavior and the actual performance of the behavior.