Habits Tab

[Ena Marklund]

Routinesare made up of a three-part "habit loop": a cue, a behavior and a reward. Understanding and interrupting that loop is key to breaking a habit, says journalist Charles Duhigg. iStockphoto.com hide caption

It turns out that every habit starts with a psychological pattern called a "habit loop," which is a three-part process. First, there's a cue, or trigger, that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and let a behavior unfold.

Neuroscientists have traced our habit-making behaviors to a part of the brain called the basal ganglia, which also plays a key role in the development of emotions, memories and pattern recognition. Decisions, meanwhile, are made in a different part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. But as soon as a behavior becomes automatic, the decision-making part of your brain goes into a sleep mode of sorts.

"In fact, the brain starts working less and less," says Duhigg. "The brain can almost completely shut down. ... And this is a real advantage, because it means you have all of this mental activity you can devote to something else."

"You can do these complex behaviors without being mentally aware of it at all," he says. "And that's because of the capacity of our basal ganglia: to take a behavior and turn it into an automatic routine."

It's not just individual habits that become automated. Duhigg says there are studies that show organizational habits form among workers working for the same company. And companies themselves exploit habit cues and rewards to try to sway customers, particularly if customers themselves can't articulate what pleasurable experience they derive from a habit.

"They thought that consumers would use it because they were craving getting rid of bad scents," he says. "And it was a total flop. People who had 12 cats and their homes smelled terrible? They wouldn't use Febreeze."

"As soon as they did that, people started using it at the end of their cleaning habits to make things smell as nice as they looked," he says. "And what they figured out is that people crave a nice smell when everything looks pretty. Now, no consumer would have said that. ... But companies can figure this out, and that's how they can make products work."

Companies can also figure out how to get consumers to change their own habits and form new ones associated with their products or stores. The megastore Target, for example, tries to target pregnant women, says Duhigg, in order to capture their buying habits for the next few years.

"The biggest moment of flexibility in our shopping habits is when we have a child," he says, "because all of your old routines go out the window, and suddenly a marketer can come in and sell you new things."

"He went in and said, 'My daughter is 16 years old. Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?' and the manager apologizes," Duhigg says. "The manager calls a couple of days later ... and the father says, 'I need to apologize. ... I had a conversation with my daughter, and it turns out there's some things going on in my house that I wasn't aware of. She's due in August.' So Target figured it out before her dad did."

"I felt like I had a lot of habits that I was powerless over. ... I have a 3-year-old and a 10-month-old. And I remember when my 3-year-old was 1 1/2 or 2. I was writing the book. We would feed him chicken nuggets or other stuff for dinner, which was the only stuff he would eat. And it was impossible for me to stop from reaching over and grabbing his chicken nuggets. It was a struggle every night not to eat his dinner because a 2-year-old dinner is designed to taste delicious and to disintegrate into your mouth into carbs and sugar. And so, I was really interested in this, and I wanted to exercise more and I wanted to be more productive at work."

A 1903 paper in the American Journal of Psychology defined a "habit, from the standpoint of psychology, [as] a more or less fixed way of thinking, willing, or feeling acquired through previous repetition of a mental experience."[2] Habitual behavior often goes unnoticed by persons exhibiting it, because a person does not need to engage in self-analysis when undertaking routine tasks. Habits are sometimes compulsory.[3] A 2002 daily experience study by habit researcher Wendy Wood and her colleagues found that approximately 43% of daily behaviors are performed out of habit.[4] New behaviours can become automatic through the process of habit formation. Old habits are hard to break and new habits are hard to form because the behavioural patterns that humans repeat become imprinted in neural pathways, but it is possible to form new habits through repetition.[5]

When behaviors are repeated in a consistent context, there is an incremental increase in the link between the context and the action. This increases the automaticity of the behavior in that context.[6] Features of an automatic behavior are all or some of: efficiency, lack of awareness, unintentionality, and uncontrollability.[7]

The word habit derives from the Latin words habere, which means "have, consist of," and habitus, which means "condition, or state of being." It also is derived from the French word habit (.mw-parser-output .IPA-label-smallfont-size:85%.mw-parser-output .references .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .infobox .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .navbox .IPA-label-smallfont-size:100%French pronunciation: [abi]), which means clothes.[8] In the 13th century CE, the word habit first just referred to clothing. The meaning then progressed to the more common use of the word, which is "acquired mode of behavior."[8]

In 1890, William James, a pioneering philosopher and psychologist, addressed the subject of habit in his book, The Principles of Psychology. James viewed habit as natural tendency in order to navigate life. To him, "living creatures... are bundles of habits" and those habits that have "an innate tendency are called instincts."[9] James also explains how habits can govern our lives. He states, "Any sequence of mental action which has been frequently repeated tends to perpetuate itself; so that we find ourselves automatically prompted to think, feel, or do what we have been before accustomed to think, feel, or do, under like circumstances, without any consciously formed purpose, or anticipated of result."[9]

There are three main components to habit formation: the context cue, behavioral repetition, and the reward.[12] The context cue can be a prior action, time of day, location, or anything that triggers the habitual behavior. This could be anything that one associates with that habit, and upon which one will automatically let a habitual behavior begin. The behavior is the actual habit that one exhibits, and the reward, such as a positive feeling, reinforces the "habit loop".[13] A habit may initially be triggered by a goal, but over time that goal becomes less necessary and the habit becomes more automatic. Intermittent or uncertain rewards have been found to be particularly effective in promoting habit learning.[14]

A variety of digital tools, such as online or mobile apps, support habit formation. For example, Habitica uses gamification, implementing strategies found in video games to real-life tasks by adding rewards such as experience and gold.[15] However, a review of such tools suggests most are poorly designed with respect to theory and fail to support the development of automaticity.[16]

Shopping habits are particularly vulnerable to change at "major life moments" like graduation, marriage, the birth of the first child, moving to a new home, and divorce. Some stores use purchase data to try to detect these events and take advantage of the marketing opportunity.[17]

Some habits are known as "keystone habits," and these influence the formation of other habits. For example, identifying as the type of person who takes care of their body and is in the habit of exercising regularly, can also influence eating better and using credit cards less. In business, safety can be a keystone habit that influences other habits that result in greater productivity.[17]

A recent study by Adriaanse et al. found that habits mediate the relationship between self-control and unhealthy snack consumption.[18] The results of the study empirically demonstrate that high self-control may influence the formation of habits and in turn affect behavior.

Goals guide habits by providing the initial outcome-oriented motivation for response repetition. In this sense, habits are often a trace of past goal pursuit.[6] Although, when a habit forces one action, but a conscious goal pushes for another action, an oppositional context occurs.[19] When the habit prevails over the conscious goal, a capture error has taken place.

Behavior prediction is also derived from goals. Behavior prediction acknowledges the likelihood that a habit will form, but in order to form that habit, a goal must have been initially present. The influence of goals on habits is what makes a habit different from other automatic processes in the mind.[20]

Some habits are nervous habits. These include nail-biting, stammering, sniffling, and banging the head. They are symptoms of an emotional state and conditions of anxiety, insecurity, inferiority, and tension. These habits are often formed at a young age and may be due to a need for attention. When trying to overcome a nervous habit, it is important to resolve the cause of the nervousness rather than the symptom which is a habit itself.[21] Anxiety is a disorder characterized by excessive and unexpected worry that negatively impacts individuals' daily life and routines.[22]

A bad habit is an undesirable behavior pattern. Common examples of individual habits include procrastination, fidgeting, overspending, and nail-biting.[23] The sooner one recognizes these bad habits, the easier it is to fix them.[24] Rather than merely attempting to eliminate a bad habit, it may be more productive to seek to replace it with a healthier coping mechanism.[25] Undesirable habits may also be shared at a communal level: for example, there are many shared habits of consumer behaviour.

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