Habits Flashcards
What are habbits
Strong associations (in memory) between contexts and responses- that have developed through repetition
Produce automatic responses to contexts that are insensitive to changes in the value or contingency of response outcomes
Habits should not be equated with frequency of occurrence- but rather should be considered as a mental construct involving features of automaticity, such as lack of awareness, mental efficiency, and being difficult to control
Primed lexical decision task
43% of actions were performed almost daily and in the same context
What makes responses automatic
Do not require deliberation- cycling
Occur outside conscious awareness- what are you thinking about?
Insensitive to changes in the value of the response
Are difficult to control
Do habitual responses occur without thinking about them
Study found that when we do habitual actions we aren’t thinking about them compared to when we are doing not habitual actions- we think about them
popcorn
Habitual eaters of popcorn ate loads of popcorn even though it was stale- but only in a cinema context
Self-report habit index
Doing X is something that is typically me- being a cyclist vs someone who cycles
Why is it hard to break habits
People may not be aware that habits drive behaviour
Or of the cues that trigger habits
Habits are also insensitive to changes in the value of the response- stale crisps
Strat 1: change circumstances
If habits are cued by recurring stimuli, then changes in circumstances that remove these stimuli should disrupt habits
Before uni- participants reported how often they exercised, read the newspaper, watched tv
Recorded the same thing while being at uni
Change in behaviour was more drastic in people who had strong habits before uni
Strat 2- vigilant monitoring
Thinking ‘don’t do it’, watching carefully for mistakes, monitoring behaviour.
Participants asked to identify behaviours that they tried to inhibit or change during a typical day
Measured how strong the habits were
Reported the strategies they used- distraction, stimulus control (remove opportunity)
For strong habits- vigilant monitoring was most successful in breaking them
Make a plan
Force a knew association between an alternative approach
study
One group asked to plan when where and how they would recycle their paper and plastic
When told to plan to recycle- people recycled more
Smoking- form implementation intentions help people stop smoking- but only for people with a week habit
