ABSTRACT

Research has demonstrated that asking people questions about a behaviour can lead to behaviour change. Despite many, varied studies in different domains, it is only recently that this phenomenon has been studied under the umbrella term of the question-behaviour effect (QBE) and moderators of the effect have been investigated. With a particular focus on our own contributions, this article: (1) provides an overview of QBE research; (2) reviews and offers new evidence concerning three theoretical accounts of the QBE (behavioural simulation and processing fluency; attitude accessibility; cognitive dissonance); (3) reports a new meta-analysis of QBE studies (k = 66, reporting 94 tests) focusing on methodological moderators. The findings of this meta-analysis support a small significant effect of the QBE (g = 0.14, 95% CI = 0.11, 0.18, p < .001) with smaller effect sizes observed in more carefully controlled studies that exhibit less risk of bias and (4) also considers directions for future research on the QBE, especially studies that use designs with low risk of bias and consider desirable and undesirable behaviour separately.

摘要

研究表明，向人们提出有关行为的问题可以导致行为改变。尽管在不同领域进行了许多不同的研究，但直到最近才在问题行为效应（QBE）的总称下对该现象进行了研究，并且对该效应的调节者进行了研究。本文特别关注我们自己的贡献：（1）概述了QBE研究；（2）审查并提供有关QBE的三个理论解释的新证据（行为模拟和处理流畅性；态度可及性；认知失调）；（3）报告了新的对QBE研究的荟萃分析（k  = 66，报告了94个测试），重点是方法论主持人。这项荟萃分析的结果表明，QBE的影响很小（g  = 0.14，95％CI  = 0.11，0.18，p  <.001），在更严格控制的研究中观察到的效应尺寸较小，偏倚风险较小，并且（4）还考虑了QBE未来研究的方向，尤其是那些使用偏见风险低的设计，并分别考虑期望和不期望的行为。