1. What are (healthy) habits
anyway?
Dr Benjamin Gardner
Lecturer in Health Psychology
Health Behaviour Research Centre, UCL
b.gardner@ucl.ac.uk
30th
April 2014

2. Actions that have come to be
automatically triggered by
situational cues
(e.g. Maddux, 1997; Verplanken & Aarts, 1999)
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3. Defining habit
• Learned
– through context-dependent repetition (Lally et al, 2010)
• Cue-dependent (stimulus-response)
• Automatic
– Do not require intention
– May be initiated without awareness
– Are initiated outside of volitional control
– Requires little/no effort (Bargh, 1996)
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4. How do habits form?
Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts & Wardle (2010)
• 96 participants
– Performed a new healthy eating, drinking or exercise
behaviour...
– Once a day, every day
• Each day, participants reported
– automaticity of behaviour (i.e. habit)
– whether bhvr performed
• Participants tracked over 12 weeks

5. Habit formation
Lally, van Jaarsveld et al (2010)
• Habit
formation best
modelled as
asymptotic
curve

6. Habit formation
Lally, van Jaarsveld et al (2010)
• Median time for
automaticity to plateau =
66 days
• Range: 18-254 days
• Simpler actions tended
to become habitual
quicker

7. Knowledge
Intention
Reasoning
Reflective and impulsive routes to behaviour
Strack & Deutsch (2004)
REFLECTIVE
(Associative store)
IMPULSIVE
Perception
of cue
Behaviour
• Habits are situated on the impulsive route to behaviour

8. Habits narrow attention towards the habitual option
Verplanken et al (1997)
• Measure of bicycle use habit
• Hypothetical task: making an unfamiliar journey
• Choose 1 of 4 transport modes (inc bicycle)
• Information available on each mode re 6 attributes
– e.g. physical effort, probability of delay, travel time
– 24 pieces of information available in total
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9. • Habitual bicycle users:
– chose bicycle more frequently (82%) than did non-habit
pcpts (50%)
– used less information (14.45 pieces) than non-habit
users (19.45)
• Similar findings for car users, familiar journeys
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Habits narrow attention towards the habitual option
Verplanken et al (1997)

10. Habits make alternatives less accessible
Danner, Aarts & de Vries (2007)
• Computerised lab task
• Participants shown goal-behaviour combinations
– e.g. ‘relaxing-television’, ‘writing-computer’
– Combination shown 1x, 3x or 9x
• Participants then shown goal, followed by:
– either the paired behaviour (e.g. relaxing-television)
– or an alternative goal-serving behaviour (relaxing-bath)
• How long does it take for participant to
recognise the behaviour as appropriate? 10

11. Habits make alternatives less accessible
Danner et al (2007)
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12. Habits and decision-making
• Habitual actors
– Choose their habitual actions more often
– Prior to decision-making:
• have less cognitive access to alternatives
• use less information on utility of available options
• use less information on features of the choice
scenario
• think less prior to making decisions

13. Process model of habitual choice
Verplanken et al (1997)

14. Habits have two main effects on behaviour
Triandis (1977)
1. Habits determines behaviour frequency
2. Habits override conscious intentions:
- where habit is strong, intentions have weakened
impact on behaviour
- where habits and intentions conflict, behaviour more
likely to be habitual than intentional 14

15. Habits override intentions
Gardner (2009)
• 105 car users
• University staff
• Measures:
– Intention to commute to campus by car over next week
– Habitual car commuting to campus
• One week later:
– Car use (% journeys to campus done by car)

16. Habits override intentions
Gardner (2009)
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MODERATE
HABIT
STRONG
HABIT

17. Habits persist despite conflicting motives
Neal, Wood, Wu & Kurlander (2012)
• 105 cinema-goers
• Ostensibly a personality study
• Watched and rated 15mins of trailers
• Given either fresh or stale (1 week old) popcorn
• Stale popcorn rated as less pleasant than fresh
popcorn

18. Habitual popcorn-eaters will eat stale popcorn
Neal et al (2012)

19. Effects of habit on behaviour
Gardner, de Bruijn & Lally (2011)
• Review of (21) applications of Self-Report Habit
Index to diet (14) and physical (in)activity (7)
• On average, habits strongly associated with
behaviour frequency
• 8 of 9 tests showed habit to override intentions in
predicting behaviour

20. Problems with traditional views of habit
Gardner (in press)
• If habit is a form of behaviour, it cannot also be a
predictor of behaviour
• Habitual behaviours can be inhibited, so are not
inevitably enacted
• Can we impose a concept rooted in animal
learning studies on complex human behaviour?

21. ‘a process by which a stimulus automatically
generates an impulse towards action, based
on learned stimulus-response associations’
Rethinking habit: a new definition
Gardner (in press)

22. Corollaries of this definition
• Habit does not activate behaviour, it activates an
impulse towards behaviour
– Habit impulses are unconscious unless they are frustrated
– Habit impulses can be overridden given sufficient skills,
resources and mental capacity
• Habit is independent of behaviour
– When cue is not encountered, habit will not be enacted
– A behaviour may not be elicited for some time but can still
be habitual
– Re-exposure to cues may reactivate ‘dormant habits’

23. Types of habit
Gardner (in press)
• Habits of decision
– Selecting one behavioural option from several
– e.g. choosing to have a coffee
• Habits of performance
– Executing the chosen option
– e.g. making the coffee

24. Summary
Habits:
•Form through repetition (with reward?)
•Activate an impulse towards the habitual option
•Focus attention on the habitual option and make
alternatives less available
•Can override conflicting intentions
•Come in two forms
– Habit of decision
– Habit of performance
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25. Thank you
b.gardner@ucl.ac.uk
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