Retrieved from: http://charlesduhigg.com/how-habits-work/ from Duhigg’s (2012) book titled, The Power of Habit – Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” – Aristotle
We all exist through some form of consistent flow of events—events that unfailingly drift from one to another through some form of frequency. We all wake up, eat, go about our day, sit at a desk, check our email, eat again, maybe go to an appointment, drive somewhere, eat again, and eventually lay our heads down in the same manner for which we did the night before. In sum, a good amount of our behavior is seen habitually and has been characterized as, “learned dispositions” (Pascoe & Wood, 2007, p. 407) that are repeated.
“Motivation gets you started. Habit keeps you going” – Jim Rohn
Interestingly enough, from the world of cognitive psychology, habits are typically comprised of implicit and procedural memory functions that are supported by either explicit or episodic memory. In that, we repeat things because we’ve done them before or remembered from past information or experiences (Goldstein, 2011). Neurologically, the more we repeat a behavior the easier and more efficient it is for our brains to process that information—neural response patterns are structured and formed that support the rapid recovery of what is required to neurologically support the action behavior (Job, Kubota, Connelly, Hillegaart, & Graybiel, 1999). So, how do we change essentially hardwired brains to behave differently, how do we, as practitioners of applied psychology, change behavior to support positive social change?
Simple; rewire the brain.
Departing from the hardwired notion, the brain is extremely plastic—it is able to rewire, learn, adapt, and form new pathways for which information can easily travel (Kolb, & Whishaw, 1998). This may sound familiar to many psychology students as it generally supports the notion of heuristics—mental shortcuts that are used to piece things together to solve problems or make decisions (Goldstein, 1999). In short, research has demonstrated that heuristics, and habits alike, utilize encoding specificity and the mapping of neural pathways that produce stronger memories that are easily recalled for particular events and information (Evans, 2006). As research has demonstrated, we must rewire our brains—update the pathways, for which we have formed in the place of habits (Jog et al., 1999). Additionally, habits can be seen as the underlying information for which drive heuristics in situations where we must derive information and piece things together—thus, if our habit is to perform X then we will likely rely upon that information in unfamiliar situations.
In our everyday lives only about 25% of what we throw away makes it to some form of recycling (EPA, 2012). Collectively, researchers have found that changing perceptions, cognitions, norms, and motivations work towards altering habitual behavior towards pro-social environmental support (Holland, Aarts, & Langendam, 2006; Knussen, Yule, MacKenzie, & Wells, 2004; Stern, & Gardner, 1981; White, & Kyde, 2012; Wood, & Neal, 2007). This, as mentioned earlier, alters the neurological pathways for which we draw our behavior from and ultimately display.
This, for many, was started a long time ago with exposure to recycling efforts in elementary school. As research has seen, particular antecedent strategies have been used throughout schools to increase the likelihood of recycling efforts that ultimately produce habitual behavior—discussions about the purpose, need, and importance of recycling, motivational efforts towards recycling, and ultimately school-wide drives that are predicated by competition between classrooms and ultimately driven by rewards or prizes (not exactly an antecedent) (Hamad, Cooper, & Semb, 1977). Within this study, and as we’ve all seen, researchers or teachers have utilized Festinger’s (1954) social comparison theory, general social priming, and competition to drive recycling efforts. Thus, such social psychology theories, in application, drive us to accurately portray ourselves through the analysis of others, implicitly drive behavior, and cumulatively produce competition that supports positive social change (all respectfully). Not only do these methods change behavior they also lay foundational neurological pathways for the creation of habitual behavior in the form of recycling.
In my own experience, the likelihood that I will recycle greatly depends upon the availability to recycle. If there are recycle bins, than I will likely recycle. If not, I’m certainly not going to walk around until I find a place to recycle my plastic cup away—this exceeds my allowable transaction cost for recycling. The easiest way for me to recycle is to make it easier to recycle or more available. I have understood, through years of priming and education that recycling is advantageous for the environment; however, the consequence of not recycling does not outweigh the transaction cost of taking all of my trash to some far away recycling bin. I believe, as a function of this, that though the environmental need to recycle exceeds society’s stance, it is truly a matter of changing society as a whole that will drive individual recycling efforts. Once society as a whole fully understands the consequences (though it may be too later) a great effort towards availability, technology, and sustainability will be made. Until then, driving efforts towards collectively changing individual habits, opinions, perceptions, and cognitions will only better serve the environment and quicken the pace towards adapting large scale societal understanding of the environmental need to recycle. This concept is at the heart of unsupportive social design (areas or buildings that make it more difficult to recycle) and our natural fight with the social dilemma of recycling versus our own time and effort Schneider et al., 2012).
I have personally seen this in action with just about any effort for the environment—from waste recycling to driving less. In that, I was apart of a small study that calculated the environmental impact alongside the economic cost of travel for a military unit. This travel, from the Eastern part of the United States to Western Europe, was to reposition a military unit for training alongside various foreign forces. Though the ultimate economic cost to travel via ship was far less than the cost to travel by aircraft, the environmental cost for airfare exceeded that of a ship and ultimately defined the means of travel. This, as with most every decision in today’s world society, depended more so on economics than the environment. Unfortunately, this is the norm, well supported by society in general, and is also another example of a social dilemma that must be overcome to truly focus on the environment. Like I mentioned earlier, this will most likely only occur once the environment has had enough of us and alters something drastic and supplies us with a real resource dilemma or environmental catastrophe so large that it requires definitive change for the existence of the human race to continue. Until then, the human race will characteristically proceed to prioritize particular comforts and luxuries at the future expense of our species and environment.
As I’ve explained, a strong process of pro-social environmental change can be generally applied by changing habits through altering the cognitive make up of our perceptions, norms, attitudes, and motivations to recycle—thus making it a common heuristic or habit that is intrinsically supported. However, without broad societal influence or environmental necessity that exceeds current transaction costs, the pathway to rewire our brains is left to miniscule pro-social environmental interventions. We can try all we want to rewire our habits towards recycling, however, until it is easier to recycle and more socially common, recycling will be mostly out of convenience than necessity.
– Morgan L. DeBusk-Lane
References
Duhigg, C. (2012). The power of habit – Why we do what we do in life and business. New York, NY: Random House.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). (2012). Municipal solid waste generation, recycling, and disposal in the United States: Facts and figures for 2012. Retrieved February 9th, 2015 from: http://www.epa.gov/solidwaste/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/2012_msw_fs.pdf
Evans, J. S. B. T. (2006). The heuristic-analytic theory of reasoning: Extension and evaluation. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 13(3), 378-395. doi:10.3758/BF03193858
Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117-140. doi:10.1177/001872675400700202
Goldstein, B. (2011). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience (3rd ed.). Wadsworth, Inc.
Hamad, C. D., Cooper, D., & Semb, G. (1977). Resource recovery: Use of a group contingency to increase paper recycling in an elementary school. Journal of Applied Psychology, 62(6), 768-772. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.62.6.768
Holland, R. W., Aarts, H., & Langendam, D. (2006). Breaking and creating habits on the working floor: A field-experiment on the power of implementation intentions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42(6), 776-783. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2005.11.006
Jog, M. S., Kubota, Y., Connolly, C. I., Hillegaart, V., & Graybiel, A. M. (1999). Building neural representations of habits. Science, 286(5445), 1745-1749. doi:10.1126/science.286.5445.1745
Knussen, C., Yule, F., MacKenzie, J., & Wells, M. (2004). An analysis of intentions to recycle household waste: The roles of past behaviour, perceived habit, and perceived lack of facilities. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 24(2), 237-246. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2003.12.001
Kolb, B., & Whishaw, I. (1998). Brain plasticity and behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 49(1), 43-64. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.49.1.43
Pascoe, A. M., & Wood, W. (2007). Habits. In R. F. Baumeister & K. D. Vohs (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Social Psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 407-409). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX2661100245&v=2.1&u=psucic&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w&asid=ebf95df4750cb6ae628178e5ed533b75
Stern, P. C., & Gardner, G. T. (1981). Habits, hardware, and energy conservation. American Psychologist, 36(4), 426-428. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.36.4.426
White, K. M., & Hyde, M. K. (2012). The role of self-perceptions in the prediction of household recycling behavior in australia. Environment and Behavior, 44(6), 785-799. doi:10.1177/0013916511408069
Wood, W., & Neal, D. T. (2007). A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface. Psychological Review, 114(4), 843-863. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.843