Metafact Review: Habits
The alarm starts beeping. You turn it off. You stretch. You check your phone. You jump in the shower. You get dressed. You rush to the kitchen. You make yourself a cup of your hot drink of choice. And so on. Habits are such a key element in our lives as certain behaviours become automatic.
How do we make doing exercise or eating healthy habitual and automatic? What about getting rid of bad habits, like texting while driving or or binge eating late at night? It's very hard for us to shape our habits and we struggle to keep New Years Resolutions.
We asked 20 neuroscientists and habit experts to share the facts on everything relating to Habits. How do habits form? Are they important? Can we break bad habits? Do habit-based interventions work for weight-loss?
Here's what we found.
Meta-Index
43%: percentage of our actions that are done everyday in the same context.
40%: people who give up on their New Year’s resolutions by June.
20%: adults in the world who smoke tobacco.
84%: increase in successfully quitting tobacco when intensive advice is received.
20%: people who achieve long-term weight loss after a diet.
60: million people in the US who are members of a fitness center or health club.
2: average time in months needed for new habits to peak.
BACKGROUND
What are habits?
Psychologist Dr Benjamin Gardner from King's College London writes that habits "are actions that proceed automatically due to learned context-action associations which are activated when people are exposed to the context." In other words, they are actions we do without thinking because we’ve done them in similar circumstances before. For example, going into a movie theatre may non-consciously activate an association between the movie theatre and eating popcorn, such that people experience an urge to eat popcorn when they enter the movie theatre says Dr Gardner.
The three-point seat belt was invented in the late 1800's, but drivers fiercely opposed it. Now, almost all of us in the US buckle up out of habit. Research has shown that wearing a seat belt reduces the risk of serious injury by half, but it was government regulations and car beeps that added friction to not doing so. As a result, 90% of people have formed a habit of using seat belts.
Habits are not universal though and very much depend on context: just 2 in 10 drivers use seat belts in India, for example. Face masks are a great example when it comes to cultural differences. People in Japan and other Asian countries have been wearing surgical masks in public for decades, even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Every year, mass wearing of face coverings becomes habitual with the start of the flu season.
So where did habits come from?
CONSENSUS
Did habit formation serve a function in evolution?
100% Affirmative via 6 experts
Specific habits have been recorded in a number of vertebrates (including humans, dogs, whales or geese). Samuel Nordlii from Indiana University, writes that all vertebrates can form habits and the brain circuits involved are retained across different species suggesting that formation of habits certainly served a role in evolution.
Habits become almost reflex, instinctive behaviours. Why would this be helpful for us as a species? We can think of them as a mechanism to bypass the decision-making step in contexts we are presented with repeatedly, and where we end up making the same decision every time. This way, we can ‘lock in’ the behaviours that we do so often and free up our attention or memory for tasks that we are not so familiar with.
Dr Wendy Wood, an expert in behavioural science from University of Southern California, agrees. If we get a reward doing a certain action in a context that keeps coming about, she says, evolution would create a shortcut to automate such response. Habit formation is a gradual process whereby your actions change the wiring of our brain. Every time we act in the same way, the habit strengthens. Over time, it becomes more automatic and is stored in our procedural memory, Wood explains. This is a form of memory which is no longer linked to consciousness, does not involve decision making and is less susceptible to changes.
This is why, according to Professor Klaus Rothermund from the University of Jena, habits almost certainly serve an evolutionary function: not because of the specific actions themselves, but because of the memory and learning processes that underlie them.
CONSENSUS
Are habits linked to the environment?
100% Affirmative via 8 experts
Forming a new habit means turning a cognitively demanding behaviour (which initially requires attention, intention, decision-making and planning) into a routine. According to our experts, the environment plays a key role here. Habit formation needs a stable context that favours our action, argues Dr Domenico Maisto, an expert in neuroscience from the National Research Council of Italy.
According to psychology expert Benjamin Gardner from King’s College London, it is the environment that ultimately triggers habitual actions. In environments where we have repeatedly done the action in the past, the habit will have formed so that we have learned to associate that environment to our action. Take popcorn as an example. Many of us ‘instinctively’ get popcorn when we go to the cinema, even if we are not particularly big fans in other contexts. So do we really like them, or is it out of habit?
A 2014 study placed either apples or popcorn near participants and looked at what they ate. Perhaps unsurprisingly, those with popcorn on hand ate more of that. However, those with apples placed near them ate more apples than popcorn, and so consumed much fewer calories. This is a great example that setting up a context that reduces friction for our preferred choice or action (here, eating apples) can be helpful.
Just like the environment which we have associated with a certain habitual behaviour is crucial, changing it can have clear effects. In another study, behavioral changes (such as stopping to use single-use bags) were found to be more successful among people who had recently moved house, showing that changing the context can help form new habits or indeed leave old ones behind — those we had learned to associate to our previous environment.
CONSENSUS
Is it harder to break a bad habit than form a good one?
71% Affirmative via 7 experts
Breaking old habits can be more challenging than forming new habits say most experts. "It is always easier to form a habit than to break one, irrespective of whether these habits are “good” or “bad” writes Professor Klaus Rothermund from the University of Jena. The reason is there is more conscious effort in breaking bad habits.
"Forming new habits requires creating a responding action to an environmental trigger" writes Dr Gina Cleo from Habit Change Institute. "For example when I’m having breakfast, I will eat a piece of fruit. On the other hand, breaking old habits requires preventing an automatic reaction from taking place (e.g., when I go to the cinema, I will not eat popcorn, or I will eat peanuts instead of popcorn). Habits are actions which are automatically responding to a triggering cue. Therefore, habitual action can be impulsive, subconscious and automatic, and we are generally not mindful of habitual performance" writes Dr Cleo.
Habits are also generally more likely to form when rewards are immediate writes Dr Rachel Smith from Texas A&M. Ice cream for an example is an immediate reward, whereas going to the gym and flossing are more often associated with long-term gratification. Many "bad" habits also involve negative reinforcement, when a behavior results in reducing a negative outcome (as opposed to increasing a positive outcome). For example, biting your nails might reduce your temporary anxiety, so the behavior is reinforced by feeling better or being distracted. For all these reasons, undesired behaviors often are the ones that are more likely to become habitual.
"Breaking a pre-existing habit therefore, requires deliberative and conscious control over automatic cue-response associations writes Dr Cleo. "This is certainly achievable" she writes "when we are highly motivated, however when we are stressed, tired, experience emotional exhaustion, cognitive overload or negative emotions, the necessary conscious control required to break a habit becomes extremely difficult to sustain. Although motivation and conscious effort are also required to form new habits, we can use external reminders to nudge us towards performing the habit, which reduces the need for action planning and prospective memory".
Quick Answers
How to build a new habit? Plan your desired action for a time and place which you encounter frequently, and place cues within your daily routine.
How can we break a habit? Avoiding the environments that trigger it, consciously refraining from performing the triggered action, or unlearning the association (which is probably the hardest).
Why do ‘bad’ habits stick so easily? They typically come with immediate gratification, while ‘good’ habits usually carry delayed reward (think of ice cream vs workout!)
Are ‘bad’ habits really bad though? Only for present-day standards. Eating junk food is arguably a bad habit today, but would have provided quick calories to our ancestors.
Do habit-based interventions for weight-loss work? Yes. Recent research suggests they are "2.4 times more likely to achieve clinically beneficial weight loss".
Is addiction a habit? Definitely not. Addiction is not a habit although habit may contribute to addiction.
TOP ANSWER
Are there methods to break habits?
Yes! Habits are malleable throughout our entire life and with enough motivation, self-regulation and persistence, can be modified, weakened or ‘broken’.
Habits are triggered by exposure to environmental cues which activate learned cue-routine associations. Breaking a habit therefore, requires inhibiting or avoiding these established cue-routine behavioural responses. There are two widely known methods to ‘break’ a habit:
1 - Creating a counter-habitual implementation intention where we reprogram an alternative behavioural response when encountering the existing habit-trigger.
For example, if an individual is in the habit of drinking wine after work to unwind, they could replace the wine with an alternative behaviour that will still help them to unwind (e.g., a cup of herbal tea, hot shower, soft music, meditation, deep breathing, stretching, etc).
Another counter-habitual strategy includes ignoring the critical cue associated with the habitual response. For example, ‘when I crave sugar, I will ignore my urge to eat something sweet’.
These strategies create new cue-routine associations that directly compete with the existing habit; with consistency, the new responses have the potential to override and diminish the old habits.
It is worth noting that implementation intentions weaken the past cue-routine associations and reduce automaticity but are effective only when they are supported by strong goal-intentions or desires.
2 - Avoiding the environments that trigger the habit are an effective strategy to breaking habits. However, some environments are difficult to avoid, for example, if you are triggered to smoke a cigarette when you get to work, it may not be possible to avoid going to work. In cases where triggering environments are possible to avoid, this should be the preferred strategy for breaking habits as it can be easier compared with creating counter-habitual responses.
It should be noted that habits vary in strength on a continuum, so that they may be more or less habitual, or automatic. It is not entirely accurate to say a habit is ‘broken’, as it is more likely weaker in strength on the habit continuum.
Dr Gina Cleo
A Habit Expert from Bond University
Takeaways
The brain loves repetition, so habits are part of our normal brain functioning.
Habits are linked to a type of memory that doesn’t involve decision-making. That’s why they feel automatic.
If there’s something you want to stop doing, change the environment or cue. If not, create a counter-habit (e.g. if you want to stop having a wine after work, start replacing it using something else, a cup of herbal tea, hot shower, soft music, meditation, deep breathing).
To form a new habit, reduce friction. Make sure there’s healthy food in your fridge and sportswear in your wardrobe for example.
Habits take time to become automatic, which will vary across people. Reward yourself and don’t despair!