Chapter 3 58 Dialectical Behavior Therapy Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) focuses on getting more control over one’s own emotions by reinforcing skills in mindfulness, emotion regulation, and stress tolerance [8]. Emotion regulation is about recognising and acknowledging emotions and accepting the fact that they come and go. The behaviour change strategies within DBT are based on validation and dialectical strategies [21]. Validation is about acknowledging one’s experiences or feelings, without judgment. Validation strategies suggest responding in an empathic way, by hearing another person’s point of view and accepting them (and their emotions) without judging. Dialectical strategies help to find truth (synthesis) in opposing viewpoints and encourage a change of the users’ attitude and behaviour. Opposites create incongruence between belief and behaviour since the stimuli or the given information contradict each other. Dialectical strategies focus on confronting the user with a practical focus on changing problem behaviour; the key is in finding a balance between acceptance of intense feelings and emotions and the need for change by adapting feelings and emotions using emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness. Emotional eaters deal with an invalidating daily life environment. With a well-balanced mix of being validated in their perception of negative emotions and a confrontation (dialectical) focussing on changing problem behaviour, DBT offers powerful mechanisms of change [23]. Our eCoaching model translates these mechanisms into persuasive features and compelling dialogues. Persuasive Technology Persuasive Technology (PT) is a significant predictor of adherence and offers strategies to reinforce the validation – and dialectical strategies’ influence on attitudes and behaviours [23]. We believe that PT can assist emotional eaters in attitude change and acceptance of their own emotions. It is essential to identify the intended outcome or change of the intervention, before determining the design principles and coaching strategies that would positively contribute to the persuasiveness in any way. We selected the Persuasive Systems Design (PSD) model [24] for translating behaviour change techniques from DBT into persuasive coaching strategies [25] since PSD focuses on persuasion context and easily implementable compelling design features. We assume that the integration of the dialectical behaviour change strategies and persuasive functions (PSDmodel) will enhance the personalisation of the virtual coach for emotional eaters and improve the effectiveness of the intervention.
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