Efrat Neter is a health psychologist and Professor of Psychology in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Ruppin Academic Center, Israel. Her research centres on health behaviour and digital health, with particular expertise in how people search for information about physical and mental health online.
- Field
- Health psychology
- Position
- Professor, Ruppin Academic Center
- Doctorate
- The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with Yaacov Trope
- Postdoc
- UCLA, with Shelley E. Taylor
Path
She completed a BA in Education and English Literature and an MA in Psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her master’s thesis, supervised by Gershon Ben-Shakhar, was a meta-analysis of 17 studies of graphology in personnel selection: graphologists predicted job performance from handwriting no better than non-graphologists, and worse than psychologists, because the judgements rested on what the writing said rather than on the shape of the letters.
Her doctorate, with Yaacov Trope, examined self-regulation in feedback seeking. A postdoctoral fellowship with Shelley Taylor at UCLA turned her towards the psychology of health.
Research
Her work spans health behaviours such as cancer screening, medication adherence, breastfeeding and vaccination. In one colorectal cancer study, faecal occult blood test kits were mailed to about 30,000 people at risk, and the wording of the note that came with the kit changed how many people used it.
In digital health, a nationally representative survey of more than 4,000 Israeli adults showed that people with higher eHealth literacy managed their medical needs better. She also studies how health conditions such as infertility and multiple sclerosis lead people to let go of some life goals and take up others.
Service
She served on the Executive Committee of the European Health Psychology Society from 2010 to 2016 and has been Secretary of the Psychology Coalition at the United Nations since 2021, helping to produce Psychology Day at the UN in 2022. She is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine and an Associate Editor of Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, where she edited a special issue on coping with the war in Ukraine.
Elsewhere
Biography adapted from the Hebrew Wikipedia entry. The collection follows her Google Scholar profile; links were checked against Crossref, OpenAlex, PubMed and ORCID. Where no online copy exists, the book opens her Scholar record.
Inspired by the libraries of Oxford · Created by David Piterman · Davidpiterman@gmail.com
