Psychology of Habit (original) (raw)
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How do habits guide behavior? Perceived and actual triggers of habits in daily life
What are the psychological mechanisms that trigger habits in daily life? Two studies reveal that strong habits are influenced by context cues associated with past performance (e.g., locations) but are relatively unaffected by current goals. Specifically, performance contexts—but not goals—automatically triggered strongly habitual behaviors in memory (Experiment 1) and triggered overt habit performance (Experiment 2). Nonetheless, habits sometimes appear to be linked to goals because people self-perceive their habits to be guided by goals. Furthermore, habits of moderate strength are automatically influenced by goals, yielding a curvilinear, U-shaped relation between habit strength and actual goal influence. Thus, research that taps self-perceptions or moderately strong habits may find habits to be linked to goals.
A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface
Psychological Review, 2007
The present model outlines the mechanisms underlying habitual control of responding and the ways in which habits interface with goals. Habits emerge from the gradual learning of associations between responses and the features of performance contexts that have historically covaried with them (e.g., physical settings, preceding actions). Once a habit is formed, perception of contexts triggers the associated response without a mediating goal. Nonetheless, habits interface with goals. Constraining this interface, habit associations accrue slowly and do not shift appreciably with current goal states or infrequent counterhabitual responses. Given these constraints, goals can (a) direct habits by motivating repetition that leads to habit formation and by promoting exposure to cues that trigger habits, (b) be inferred from habits, and (c) interact with habits in ways that preserve the learned habit associations. Finally, the authors outline the implications of the model for habit change, especially for the selfregulation of habit cuing.
By force of habit: On the formation and maintenance of goal-directed habits
Kurt Lewin Institute Dissertation Series, 2007
The aim of this thesis is to examine how goal-directed habits are formed and established. Specifically, I will analyze the cognitive mechanism underlying habits and the role of intentions in guiding goal-directed behavior. In studying the cognitive mechanism, I will demonstrate the possible functional role of inhibition in two separate ways. Inhibitory processes (1) facilitate the formation of habits in a context where several means are available for goal attainment and (2) ward off habitual intrusions when intentions are formed to perform non-habitual behavior. Furthermore, as habitual behaviors are often conceived of as becoming dissociated from conscious intentions to perform the behavior, I will provide evidence that habits moderate the relation between intentions and later goal-directed behavior. In daily life we perform all kinds of behaviors to attain specific goals in absence of conscious awareness as we have performed these behaviors many times before. To take an example, in the morning I may grab my belongings and walk towards my bicycle to take my standard route to work, all without (much) conscious thought as I have carried out these behaviors on many previous occasions. Or, I may enter my favorite pub on Friday night to meet my friends who are already sitting at the bar. After saying hello to them I automatically ask the bartender to pour a pint of beer for each of us, although each Friday night while standing at that same bar I declare that I actually would prefer a glass of wine (in my opinion it tastes better and will cause less of a hangover the next morning, especially after having fish for dinner). It may even be after a couple of beers that one of my friends asks me why I am not drinking wine before it hits me that I have not thought of this option; I failed once again to act upon my genuine intentions. After all, I always order beer when meeting my friends in this pub. People are thus able to perform rather complex behaviors (e.g., getting to work, socializing with friends) in the absence of explicit intent as a result of frequently engaging in them. It is even more striking that people are capable of automatically selecting and performing a specific goal-directed behavior without General Introduction 7 Unna Danner, By Force of Habit considering all possible options that may also serve as means to attain their goal. Although I could have ordered all kinds of drinks and actually prefer another drink, I ask for my usual beer. When reflecting on the reason why a specific action is undertaken, people often come up with the answer "because I always do so" or in other words, by force of habit. However, to be able to perform goal-directed behavior in a habitual fashion, one must first form the habit. This formation process seems especially challenging in a situation where multiple means are available for goal attainment. Even though we can choose between different drinks to attain the goal, we select a specific means (beer) while the other means (wine) seem to be forgotten. But how does this process occur anyway? When goal-directed habits have developed, it seems also challenging to execute intentions to perform non-habitual behavior to attain the same goal. How do we manage to act upon these intentions without the habit hindering this process? Furthermore, once habits are established, under what circumstances can intentions be effective, and when is it less likely that intention will lead to action? These questions that are addressed in the present thesis seem to gain in interest in recent research on regulatory processes in cognitive social psychology. There are different kind of habits, such as instinctive, reflexive behaviors (e.g., stuttering) or learned simple behavioral reactions to environmental cues (these behaviors are a central topic in behaviorism). Therefore different conceptualizations of habits exist. In this thesis, I discuss research on habits as goal-oriented-that is, as a form of automatic goal-directed behavior, e.g., socializing with your friends each Friday night in the same pub by means of sharing a beer or two. I will focus on the understanding of goal-directed habits, both on the formation and on the maintenance of these habits. The remaining part of this introductory chapter I will briefly provide an overview of the main theoretical issues and assumptions that underlie my research. I will first discuss theory and research that conceptualizes habits as knowledge structures. Specifically, I will argue that habits can be regarded as goal-means associations Chapter 1 8 Unna Danner, By Force of Habit that gain in strength due to practice. Subsequently, the potential relevance of inhibitory control in the formation of habits will be discussed. That is, I will argue that habit formation has to be shielded against the interference of other means that are also available for attainment of the same goal. Then I will focus on the mental processes guiding intentions to deviate from habitual behavior and examine the role of intentions in controlling and guiding habits. Specifically, I will discuss how habits moderate the relation between intentions and future behavior. In the final part of this introduction, I will introduce the three chapters in which the mental processes underlying habits are empirically tested. Before I elaborate on these issues, I will first outline a brief history on the conceptualization and examination of habits in human behavior. A historical note on habits The appreciation of habits as important elements of everyday life has a long history in psychology and was already apparent in William James's Principles of Psychology (1890). James dedicated an entire chapter to habits and he argued in the first sentence of this chapter that one has to acknowledge "living creatures as bundles of habits". Although his description of habits pertains to various kinds of behavioral habits, his explanation of their purpose and shaping through practice does also apply to goal-directed habits: "As Dr. Maudsley (1876) says: If an act became no easier after being done several times, if the careful direction of consciousness were necessary to its accomplishment on each occasion, it is evident that the whole activity of a lifetime might be confined to one or two deeds-that no progress could take place in development" (p. 114). In line with these ideas behaviorists postulated that behavior is largely influenced by habits (e.g., Hull, 1943; Skinner, 1938; Watson, 1914). As they conceptualized habits as well-learned simple stimulus-response associations, they reduced human behavior to merely rigid behavioral patterns that automatically follow environmental cues.
The role of habit in compulsivity
European Neuropsychopharmacology, 2016
Compulsivity has been recently characterized as a manifestation of an imbalance between the brain's goal-directed and habit-learning systems. Habits are perhaps the most fundamental building block of animal learning, and it is therefore unsurprising that there are multiple ways in which the development and execution of habits can be promoted/discouraged. Delineating these neurocognitive routes may be critical to understanding if and how habits contribute to the many faces of compulsivity observed across a range of psychiatric disorders. In this review, we distinguish the contribution of excessive stimulus-response habit learning from that of deficient goal-directed control over action and response inhibition, and discuss the role of stress and anxiety as likely contributors to the transition from goal-directed action to habit. To this end, behavioural, pharmacological, neurobiological and clinical evidence are synthesised and a hypothesis is formulated to capture how habits fit into a model of compulsivity as a transdiagnostic psychiatric trait.
Shifting the balance between goals and habits: Five failures in experimental habit induction
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Habits are repetitive behaviors that become ingrained with practice, routine, and repetition. The more we repeat an action, the stronger our habits become. Behavioral and clinical neuroscientists have become increasingly interested in this topic because habits may contribute to aspects of maladaptive human behavior, such as compulsive behavior in psychiatry. Numerous studies have demonstrated that habits can be induced in otherwise healthy rats by simply overtraining stimulus-response behaviors. However, despite growing interest in this topic and its application to psychiatry, a similar body of work in humans is absent. Only a single study has been published in humans that shows the effect of extensive training on habit expression. Here, we report five failed attempts to demonstrate that overtraining instrumental behavior leads to the development of inflexible habits in humans, using variants of four previously published outcome devaluation paradigms. Extensive training did not lead to greater habits in two versions of an avoidance learning task, in an appetitive slips-of-action task, or in two independent attempts to replicate the original demonstration. The finding that these outcome devaluation procedures may be insensitive to duration of stimulus-response training in humans has implications for prior work in psychiatric populations. Specifically, it converges with the suggestion that the failures in outcome devaluation in compulsive individuals reflect dysfunction in goal-directed control, rather than overactive habit learning. We discuss why habits are difficult to experimentally induce in healthy humans, and the implications of this for future research in healthy and disordered populations.
How to Form Good Habits? A Longitudinal Field Study on the Role of Self-Control in Habit Formation
Frontiers in Psychology
When striving for long-term goals (e.g., healthy eating, saving money, reducing energy consumption, or maintaining interpersonal relationships), people often get in conflict with their short-term goals (e.g., enjoying tempting snacks, purchasing must-haves, getting warm, or watching YouTube video's). Previous research suggests that people who are successful in controlling their behavior in line with their long-term goals rely on effortless strategies, such as good habits. In the present study, we aimed to track how self-control capacity affects the development of good habits in real life over a period of 90 days. Results indicated that habit formation increased substantially over the course of three months, especially for participants who consistently performed the desired behavior during this time. Contrary to our expectations, however, self-control capacity did not seem to affect the habit formation process. Directions for future research on self-control and other potential moderators in the formation of good habits are discussed.
Habits in everyday life: Thought, emotion, and action
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2002
To illustrate the differing thoughts and emotions involved in guiding habitual and nonhabitual behavior, 2 diary studies were conducted in which participants provided hourly reports of their ongoing experiences. When participants were engaged in habitual behavior, defined as behavior that had been performed almost daily in stable contexts, they were likely to think about issues unrelated to their behavior, presumably because they did not have to consciously guide their actions. When engaged in nonhabitual behavior, or actions performed less often or in shifting contexts, participants' thoughts tended to correspond to their behavior, suggesting that thought was necessary to guide action. Furthermore, the self-regulatory benefits of habits were apparent in the lesser feelings of stress associated with habitual than nonhabitual behavior.
Breaking ‘bad habits’: a dynamical perspective on habit formation and change
Much of our daily behaviour is habitual. Habits are defined as behaviours that are performed with a minimum of cognitive effort. Habits allow for an effective use of our limited cognitive capacities. However, due to this automatising of behaviour, habits are less susceptible for change than reasoned behaviour. Especially when a habit provides positive outcomes in the present but detrimental outcomes on the long run, one can speak of a 'bad habit'. Such 'bad habits' are hard to change because cognitive information on negative outcomes will hardly affect the automatised behavioural scripts. This chapter describes the emergence of habits from a dynamical perspective. This implies that a perspective is drawn on what type of processes play a role at what stage in the development of a habit. This dynamical perspective provides indications for effective strategies to break habits.
To investigate the process of habit formation in everyday life, 96 volunteers chose an eating, drinking or activity behaviour to carry out daily in the same context (for example 'after breakfast') for 12 weeks. They completed the self-report habit index (SRHI) each day and recorded whether they carried out the behaviour. The majority (82) of participants provided sufficient data for analysis, and increases in automaticity (calculated with a subset of SRHI items) were examined over the study period. Nonlinear regressions fitted an asymptotic curve to each individual's automaticity scores over the 84 days. The model fitted for 62 individuals, of whom 39 showed a good fit. Performing the behaviour more consistently was associated with better model fit. The time it took participants to reach 95% of their asymptote of automaticity ranged from 18 to 254 days; indicating considerable variation in how long it takes people to reach their limit of automaticity and highlighting that it can take a very long time. Missing one opportunity to perform the behaviour did not materially affect the habit formation process. With repetition of a behaviour in a consistent context, automaticity increases following an asymptotic curve which can be modelled at the individual level. Performing an action for the first time requires planning, even if plans are formed only moments before the action is performed, and attention. As behaviours are repeated in consistent settings they then begin to proceed more efficiently and with less thought as control of the behaviour transfers to cues in the environment that activate an automatic response: a habit. How long does it take to form a habit? This question is often asked by individuals who want to acquire healthy habits or those who want to promote behaviour change. However, we are not aware of any studies that have systematically investigated the habit formation process within individuals, and none have examined the development of 'real world' habitual behaviours. The past decade has seen a resurgence of interest in the topic of habitual behaviour within social psychology. There is still debate over how habits should be conceptualized and operationalized, but there is consensus that habits are acquired through incremental strengthening of the association between a situation (cue) and an action, i.e