1 Applying Psychology to Health Behavior Interventions Not Last Decade ’ s Approach

chology. My goal in this introductory chapter is to provide some historical and disciplinary context for this new field. I had originally considered as a subtitle “Not Your Dad’s (or Mom’s) Research Approach.” However, as I delved into the literature, I soon realized that this field began much more recently than a generation ago—indeed, mostly in the last decade. As a social psychologist with a strong applied orientation, but not a health psychologist per se, I sought a source that would provide some background on the area of organ donation. Hence, I consulted two classic volumes on health psychology. The first was Shelley Taylor’s seminal textbook, Health Psychology (2nd ed.), published in 1991. I found that its index had no listing of organ or of donation. It did list liver and kidney, but only in a brief section that explained how these organs work in the processes of digestion and excretion. However, I reasoned, that book is now over 15 years old, so perhaps a newer volume might give a summary of research on organ donation. So next I consulted the massive, multivolume series entitled Handbook of Psychology, published by Wiley in 2003—specifically, volume 9, Health Psychology, which is over 660 pages in length (Nezu, Nezu, & Geller, 2003). But again I found that its index did not list either organ or donation. Also, its chapter headings gave no indication that research on organ donation would fit within any of their purviews. Hmmm! I began to wonder—maybe there is no research in this field. Can that be true? Thus, to begin the process of contextualization, I retreated to the broader area of applied social psychology—specifically, my own text in that field (Oskamp & Schultz, 1998). Of course, its subject index didn’t list organ or donation either! However, its chapters on various research methods and on health and health care did help me begin to fit the topic of organ donation into a broader perspective. 1