PhD
Professor, Psychology
UNC-Chapel Hill
Cancer Prevention and Control
Area of Interest
I am a social psychologist and conduct research on health behavior change. There are four strands to this work:
- A key focus has been the intention-behavior ‘gap.’ My colleagues and I have shown that people successfully translate (even strong) intentions into action only about 50% of the time (e.g., Orbell & Sheeran, 1998; Sheeran, 2002). Our research also pinpointed several factors that determine the consistency between intentions and behavior (Sheeran, & Webb, 2012).
- A concomitant line of research uses if-then plans or implementation intentions to reduce the intention-behavior ‘gap’ and increase performance of important health behaviors. A series of RCTs has shown that forming if-then plans reduced pregnancy rates among teenagers (by 42% over two years; Martin, Sheeran et al., 2011), enhanced medication adherence among patients with epilepsy (Brown, Sheeran, & Reuber, 2009), and improved attendance for cervical cancer screening (Sheeran & Orbell, 2000), inter alia.
- A third line of research is concerned with providing critical tests of health behavior theories. This work uses meta-analysis to assess how much change in health-related intentions and behavior accrues from interventions that change risk perceptions, fear/worry, perceptions of severity, attitudes, social norms, and self-efficacy (e.g., Sheeran, Harris, & Epton, 2013).
- Recent work has begun to examine nonconscious routes to action and the self-regulation of unwanted, nonconscious influences (Gollwitzer, Sheeran et al., 2011; Rivis & Sheeran, 2013; Sheeran, Gollwitzer, & Bargh, 2013).
Awards and Honors
- Elected Fellow of the Association of Psychological Science, 2013
- Elected Fellow of the European Health Psychology Society, 2012
- Elected Fellow of the British Psychological Society, 2012
- Elected Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences, 2011
- Elected Fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, 2010
News and Stories
Study finds youth have misperceptions about synthetic nicotine in e-cigarettes
Seth Noar, PhD, Sarah Kowitt, PhD, MPH, and colleagues report in a study that there is widespread uncertainty and misperceptions about the sources of nicotine in e-cigarettes among youth.
Study reveals most effective anti-vaping messages for teens
Seth Noar, PhD, Marcella Boynton, PhD, and colleagues report that effective anti-vaping advertisements geared to teens have the greatest impact when they emphasize adverse consequences and harms.
