Compensatory health beliefs (CHBs) refer to beliefs that engaging in an unhealthy behaviour can be compensated for, or the negative effects reduced by, engaging in perceived healthier behaviours. It is argued that people engage with CHBs to self-justify unhealthy behavioural choices and reduce the cognitive dissonance invoked by engaging in the unhealthy behaviour in the knowledge that it is harmful (Knauper, Rabiau Cohen, & Patriciu, 2004). Previous research has shown that CHBs are related to an increase in unhealthy behaviours such as an unhealthy diet, and to other health behaviours such as adherence to weight loss diets (e.g. Kronick, et al 2011, Miquelon, et al 2012). However dispositional influences on CHBs have largely been neglected in the research to date. Two dispositions that may influence CHBs are optimism and resilience as these have both previously been shown to be related to health beliefs and behaviours. Dispositional optimism has previously been shown to have a beneficial effect on health particularly in the recovery from disease (Smith, 2006) however high levels of optimism may also be detrimental, particularly if an individual is unrealistic in their optimistic belief (Weinstein, 1989). Optimism has previously been shown to influence health beliefs in that people who are optimistic tend to perceive the consequences of particular health risk behaviours as less risky (Smith, 2006). Therefore it seems likely that optimism may increase the levels of CHBs adopted as people may be optimistic that they will perform the compensatory behaviour, or that the behaviour will compensate for the negative effects. Resilience has also previously been shown to influence health behaviours, in that individuals who are resilient tend to adopt healthier lifestyles, and are more able to cope with the temptation to deviate from a healthy lifestyle (Mistry et al 2010). Therefore resilience may lower the use of CHBs as individuals may be more likely to resist temptation than activate CHBs. However, the relationship between resilience, dispositional optimism and CHBs has yet to be examined. A cross-sectional questionnaire design examined the relationships between dispositional optimism, resilience, and the four subtypes of compensatory health beliefs. 306 undergraduate students at a UK University took part in the study 23 participants did not give details of their sex, age or ethnicity. Of the 283 who did; 92 were Male, 191 were female, with an age range of 18-43 years with a mean age of 21.14 (SD=3.45). 51% were White, 32% were Asian, 10% were Black, and 7% classified themselves as ‘other’. Participants completed the paper and pencil versions of Life Orientation Test – Revised, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, and the Compensatory Health Belief scale which took approximately twenty minutes to complete. All BPS ethical codes of conduct were observed in this study. To examine whether resilience and optimism significantly predict compensatory health beliefs How do resilience and optimism influence compensatory health beliefs? Heather Semper* De Montfort University Leicester UK. Methods Results Conclusions References Further information For further information regarding the study, please contact Heather Semper at hsemper@dmu.ac.uk Via Twitter @hetha2009 Or post: H0.17 Hawthorn Building Faculty of Health and Life Sciences The Gateway Leicester LE1 9BH Rabiau, M., Knauper, B., & Miquelon, P. (2006). The eternal quest for optimal balance between maximizing pleasure and minimizing harm: The compensatory health belief model. British Journal of Health Psychology. 11, 139-153. Lichenstein A.H., Appel, L.J. Brands, M., Carnethon, M. Et al (2006) Diet and lifestyle recommendations revision 2006. Circulation 114, 82-96 Mistry, R., McCarthy, W.J., Yancey, A.K., Lu, Y., & Patel, M. (2009). Resilience and patterns of health risk behaviours in California adolescents. Preventive Medicine 48, 291-297. Smith, T.W. (2006). Personality as risk and resilience in physical health. Current Directions in Psychological Sciences. 15 (5), 227-231 Weinstein, N.D. (1984). Why it won’t happen to me: perceptions of risk factors and susceptibility. Health Psychology, 3, 431-457. Only weight regulation CHBs were significantly related to optimism and resilience no other CHB was related to either optimism or resilience. Suggesting that sleep, substance use, and stress CHBs are not influenced by either optimism or resilience. Optimism and resilience significantly predicted weight regulation CHBs. As optimism increased weight regulation CHBs increased, but as resilience increased, weight regulation CHBs decreased. This suggests that people who score higher on dispositional optimism tend to hold more weight regulatory CHBs, whereas those who are resilient tend to hold less weight regulatory CHBs. Resilient individuals seem to be able to either resist temptation and not adopt CHBs when regulating weight or find alternative means of reducing the dissonance when faced with food temptation. Whereas optimistic individuals potentially seem to believe that they can and will compensate for an unhealthy weight regulation behaviour by performing a healthy behaviour later. Alternatively they could believe that and the healthy behaviour would successfully compensate for the ill effects of the risky behaviour. However, which of these is the most likely explanations should be further examined. Future research should determine how optimism and resilience influence beliefs about compensation for risky behaviour, and examine an the ability to resist temptation, and self efficacy in addition to CHBs. This should be done using more reliable and behaviour specific measures of CHBs, in order to test the hypothesised CHB model more thoroughly. Objectives Introduction All multivariate assumptions were checked and the data conformed to the assumptions of normality, homoscedasticity, independence of error, and no multicollinearity. (DW=1.45; VIF=1.35) Optimism and resilience were significantly positively correlated (r=.50, p<.05; N=306). There was only a significant relationship between optimism, resilience and the weight regulation CHB subscale (p<.05); as such, only the weight regulation CHB was examined here. With dispositional optimism, and resilience entered into the hierarchical regression equation; the second model was a reasonable fit with the data (R=.18) and 3% of the variance in weight regulation CHBs was accounted for by optimism and resilience (R 2 =.03; Adj.R 2 =.03). The model was significantly better than the mean at predicting scores on weight regulatory CHBs (F(2,303)= 5.27; p<.05). However it was a small effect size (f 2 =0.04). Optimism was a significant positive predictor of weight regulation CHBs (p<.05), and resilience was a significant negative predictor of weight regulation CHBs (p<.05). Table 1. Summary of simultaneous regression analysis for optimism and resilience predicting weight regulation compensatory health beliefs I would like to acknowledge the help with data collection from our MSc students; Gemma Fox, Maimuna Ogbonna, Kayleigh Hodges, Kerry Quincey, Nadine Wood, Sophie Rice, Jenisha Meisurria, Anisa Giga, Rebecca Rees, Dipti Thakkar, and Maria Loizou.