Dr. Dijkstra wil describe his recent research conducted in the Netherlands exploring elements of tailored interventions that are most potent in affecting health behavior change.

<a href="http://chcr.umich.edu/who_we_are/people/person.2005-04-22.2042447667/person_view"><b>Arie Dijkstra</b></a>, from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, is one
of the leading researchers in the area of tailored health 
communications. His research focuses on deconstructing and searching
for the active elements of tailored communications.<br>
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Dr Dijkstra practices Applied Social Psychology in two ways. Firstly,
he maps the social psychology of health and illness. For example, he
studies why smokers keep on smoking despite their knowledge of the
detrimental effects, why patients with a chronic illness accept their
illness, why depressed patients quit their antidepressant medication
but also why pets can increase quality of life of humans. Secondly, he
studies social psychological theories in applied settings. For example,
he investigates how self-discrepancies influence information processing
in obese people, how prototypes of patients influence acceptance of an
illness, to what extent a self-threat leads to self-evaluative emotions
and how people affirm their self. In addition dr Dijkstra studies
working mechanisms of computer-tailored persuasive communications.<a href="http://chcr.umich.edu/who_we_are/people/person.2005-04-22.2042447667/person_view"></a><br>