Understanding Mental Health: What Are Channel Factors?

As most are painfully aware of, the quest to inspire another human being to take up a behavior, or alternatively abandon a behavior can be a very difficult one. For, it often seems that no matter how infallible or how strong we may make our arguments out to be, getting out point across and actually inspiring another person to do something is another method entirely. The debate over what makes these changes so hard to elicit can be somewhat answered by our study of channel factors. First introduced in 1952, channel factors have become a major part of modern psychology, and help to answer many important questions about mental health processes.

At it's core, the idea behind channel factors is understanding why some minor details or seemingly insignificant actions can have such a major impact as a whole. In other words, why is it that an impassioned speech and countless warnings from parents may not inspire safer driving in their teens, but a news story about a car accident will change their attitudes around. While this may seem like a complicated idea, in order to better understand how channel factors work, perhaps the best method is to take a look at some of the earliest research into the subject.

One of the pioneering studies that deal with channel factors was done by Howard Leventhal on a group of senior Yale students (Leventhal, Singer, & Jones, 1965). In order to persuade students to get a tetanus vaccination from the health center, a variety of methods were used. These methods included everything from pictures of those suffering from tetanus to lectures on common ways that tetanus can be contracted. However, despite the many measures taken, very few students actually went to the health center. The researchers discovered, though, that when the students were given a map which highlighted the easiest way to the health center, along with a schedule listing open times and a phone number, the amount of students who went for the shot multiplied by 9.

From this study, we can conclude some very interesting facts about channel factors. Namely, when something is put into simpler terms, and made easier, there is a much higher percentage of people willing to do it. Also, when guesswork and effort is eliminated, we can see that these minor details can make all the difference. Channel factors help to explain why certain actions can become so important and so central to the inspiration of action, while other, more detailed methods simply fall by the wayside.

In short, channel factors are so incredibly important because they can be used to inspire actions which are good and or healthy with incredible effectiveness. Think of this, much like the Yale experiment, if a college wanted to persuade students to engage in flu vaccinations, or something similar, this could be done in a simple and effective manner using channel factors, saving time and money from being spent on more elusive and less effective measures.

When we make it easier to follow one path than the other, we are essentially using channel factors in order to inspire or to guide certain actions. Even though we may not think or often acknowledge channel factors as a component of mental health, they are an incredibly important element of mental health and especially of social psychology. If we lean to use channel factors effectively, we will find that inspiring action and getting our messages across becomes much easier and more effective, with a lot less effort and a lot less time spent.