It’s Not All About Me: Motivating Hand Hygiene Among Health Care Professionals by Focusing on Patients
Abstract
Diseases often spread in hospitals because health care professionals fail to wash their hands. Research suggests that to increase health and safety behaviors, it is important to highlight the personal consequences for the actor. However, because people (and health care professionals in particular) tend to be overconfident about personal immunity, the most effective messages about hand hygiene may be those that highlight its consequences for other people. In two field experiments in a hospital, we compared the effectiveness of signs about hand hygiene that emphasized personal safety (“Hand hygiene prevents you from catching diseases”) or patient safety (“Hand hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases”). We assessed hand hygiene by measuring the amount of soap and hand-sanitizing gel used from dispensers (Experiment 1) and conducting covert, independent observations of health care professionals’ hand-hygiene behaviors (Experiment 2). Results showed that changing a single word in messages motivated meaningful changes in behavior: The hand hygiene of health care professionals increased significantly when they were reminded of the implications for patients but not when they were reminded of the implications for themselves.
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Several messaging approaches may be effective, including emphasizing the benefits to the recipient, focusing on protecting others, aligning with the recipient's moral values, appealing to social consensus or scientific norms, and/or highlighting social group approval.
“Several messaging approaches may be effective, including emphasizing the benefits to the recipient 146 , focusing on protecting others (for example, 'wash your hands to protect your parents and grandparents' 147 ), aligning with the recipient's moral values 148 , appealing to social consensus or scientific norms 149-151 and/or highlighting social group approval 152,153 .”
From Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response (2020) · cites this paper as [147]
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Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response
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- Authors
- Grant, A. M., & Hofmann, D. A.
- Affiliations
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US)
- Corresponding author
- Grant, Adam M.
- ORCID
- Grant, Adam M.
- Venue
- Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2011-11-10
- Volume
- 22
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 1494-1499
- ISSN
- 0956-7976 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9280
- OpenAlex
- W2156492595
- Semantic Scholar
- 5cae29d7deae81eaf3c1c7f031ca514adf6233b1
- Cited by
- 239
- References
- 36
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 25 · 2021: 44 · 2020: 36 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 14 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 11 · 2014: 20 · 2013: 7 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 6.47
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Association for Psychological Science
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Infectious Diseases › Infection Control in Healthcare
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Behavioral Health and Interventions
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Psychology of Social Influence
- Keywords
- hand hygiene, healthcare workers, patient safety, personal safety, framing effects, health messaging, overconfidence, personal immunity, nosocomial infections, behavior change
- MeSH terms
- Hand Disinfection, Health Personnel, Hospitals, Humans, Motivation, United States, Infection Control, Patient Safety
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