The term lifestyle is often used to describe an individual’s personal choice of leisure activities, interests, and values. It is a very broad concept that can cover many aspects of an individual’s life, from food and exercise to social engagement and relationships. However, the meaning and concept of lifestyle is widely contested, with numerous fields of research adopting different definitions and theories of lifestyle. In health psychology, there are a variety of models of healthy lifestyle that focus on particular behavioural components of lifestyle. However, these models do not consider the wider context of lifestyle and are therefore limited in their effectiveness.
The aim of this article is to shed light on the lifestyle construct, reexamining its main definitions and theories from psychological and sociological perspectives in order to develop more effective theoretical and explanatory models that can guide future research into lifestyle and health.
In the early stages of the development of the lifestyle concept, psychologists based their definition on internal factors and personal character. This approach was first introduced by Adler [12] who described an individual’s lifestyle as a set of fundamental character traits and values that define the personality and influence the behaviour of each person.
Later, the concept was further elaborated by other authors, who focused on the interaction between an individual’s internal factors and external social structures. Thorstein Veblen proposed that people adopt specific’schemes of life’, and in particular specific patterns of conspicuous consumption, depending on the desire for distinction from social strata they identify as inferior and a desire for emulation of those they identify as superior.
Moreover, Giddens and Bourdieu suggested that social practices resulted from the encounter between the externalisation of societal structures and the internalisation of these structures by individuals. This interaction led to the formation of a ‘style’ of living that is characterised by an exchange and repositioning between individual and society in definite space-time dimensions.
Another important factor that is reflected in the various conceptualisations of lifestyle is its temporal dimension. The majority of the main definitions and theories of lifestyle utilise this characteristic to define how a style of living can evolve and change over time, for example, due to life events or the influence of specific sociocultural conditions.
The present study reexamines the current state of knowledge of the lifestyle concept and its facets, highlighting the main definitions and theories that are commonly found in the psychological and sociological literature. In addition, the paper also outlines an alternative model for the definition of lifestyle that is able to integrate both individual and social dimensions and that takes into account its temporal characteristics. It is this alternative model that will serve as the basis for the construction of a more effective theoretical and explanatory framework for lifestyle and health. The model also helps to distinguish between the behavioural component of lifestyle and its deeper meanings, attitudes and values that are associated with it. This will allow researchers to focus on the lifestyle component of health practice models in the future.
