A Social Cognitive Approach in Enhancing Health Behaviour by Way of Exercise

People all over the world are becoming health conscious. The state of one's health is reflected in an individual's capacity for meeting life's challenges and maintaining a level of optimal functioning. Bandura's (1977, 2001) concept of self-efficacy was examined on 200 subjects (100 males and 100 females, between the age group 18 to 60, M=43.86, SD=14.5 and M=44.39, SD=13.09 years respectively) residing in and around Shimla and Mandi districts in Himachal Pradesh. The paper attempts to validate the two major hypotheses that: (I) self-efficacy promotes the need or desire to engage in physical exercise and (II) there are gender related differences with regard to selfefficacy with men showing a higher tendency to exercise in comparison to women. Results point that self-efficacy enhances health behaviour in terms of physical as well as oral hygiene in the case of both men and women. The highly efficacious showed positive health beliefs in terms of aspects like outcome expectancy, intentions, planning as well as exercise habits. Males indeed had an edge over their female counterparts’ which indicates gender differences, thereby lending support to the hypothesised statements in this study. This study highlights that people are desirous of staying fit and healthy and are willing to inculcate health enhancing practices. Self-efficacy hence plays a pivotal role in aiding human beings to develop competencies to stay fit. It makes a difference in how one thinks, acts and feels. Today the trend is towards exercising and the ‘feel good’ or ‘look good’ effect. These aspects are contributing effectively to health behaviour. More evidence is however needed for taking environmental factors into consideration with regard to exercise and health beliefs in India, since there are tremendous climatic variations which affect exercise behaviour.