Understanding Psychological Well-Being From the Behavioral Perspective

Abstract

Despite the great burden of mood disorders, much of the treatment gap remains due to under-recognition. One way to alleviate this burden would be to target unhealthful behaviors that are more prevalent among those who experience symptoms of mood disorders. This dissertation aims to evaluate new ways to measure and to understand behaviors related to psychological well- being drawing from the fields of behavioral economics, marketing, and engineering in a systematic review (Paper 1), a mixed methods study (Paper 2), and an online survey and experiment (Paper 3). Paper 1 is a systematic review that evaluated the most up-to-date evidence on the feasibility of smartphone applications as a research tool for monitoring mood disorders. Using nine bibliographic databases, we identified 30 relevant studies that attempted to measure and quantify the five common phenotypic categories in the context of mood disorders: social activity, physical activity, sleep, voice, and mobility. Common limitations that impact the robustness of statistical inferences include sparse or lack of clinical assessments as gold standards, small sample size, and data incompleteness. There is high potential but limited evidence in using smartphone data to monitor mood disorders. In paper 2, we evaluated the motivations to use Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDs) by conducting logistic regressions and thematic analyses on demographics, intention to quit, and experience with ENDs from a commercial online panel to evaluate the motivations to use ENDs. We identified health, image, enjoyment, and utility as the key motivation to use ENDs. With approximately half of the respondents cited non-health reasons, the reasons and preferences for ENDS varied by smoking status and types of ENDs used. In paper 3, we evaluated the relationships among depression, health behaviors, and intertemporal decisions that involve costs and rewards across different points in time. We found that sub-threshold depression was associated present bias but not impatience; whereas, high risks for depression was not associated with present bias or impatience. When primed, those who were depressed were more likely to take up commitment devices than those who were healthy.