Habits and Goals in Human Behavior: Separate but Interacting Systems.

People automatically repeat behaviors that were frequently rewarded in the past in a given context. Such repetition is commonly attributed to habit, or associations in memory between a context and a response. Once habits form, contexts directly activate the response in mind.

Hale and Hearty Policies: How Psychological Science Can Create and Maintain Healthy Habits.

Strategies are needed to ensure that the U.S. Government meets its goals for improving the health of the nation (e.

How do people adhere to goals when willpower is low? The profits (and pitfalls) of strong habits.

Across 5 studies, we tested whether habits can improve (as well as derail) goal pursuit when people have limited willpower. Habits are repeated responses automatically triggered by cues in the performance context. Because the impetus for responding is outsourced to contextual cues, habit performance does not depend on the finite self-control resources required for more deliberative actions.

The pull of the past: when do habits persist despite conflict with motives?

To identify the factors that disrupt and maintain habit performance, two field experiments tested the conditions under which people eat out of habit, leading them to resist motivational influences. Habitual popcorn eaters at a cinema were minimally influenced by their hunger or how much they liked the food, and they ate equal amounts of stale and fresh popcorn. Yet, mechanisms of automaticity influenced habit performance: Participants ate out of habit, regardless of freshness, only when currently in the context associated with past performance (i.

Can't control yourself? Monitor those bad habits.

What strategies can people use to control unwanted habits? Past work has focused on controlling other kinds of automatic impulses, especially temptations. The nature of habit cuing calls for certain self-control strategies. Because the slow-to-change memory trace of habits is not amenable to change or reinterpretation, successful habit control involves inhibiting the unwanted response when activated in memory.

A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface.

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.