How do habits guide behavior? Perceived and actual triggers of habits in daily life

a r t i c l e i n f o What are the psychological mechanisms that trigger habits in daily life? Two studies reveal that strong habits are influenced by context cues associated with past performance (e.g., locations) but are relatively unaffected by current goals. Specifically, performance contexts—but not goals—automatically triggered strongly habitual behaviors in memory (Experiment 1) and triggered overt habit performance (Experiment 2). Nonetheless, habits sometimes appear to be linked to goals because people self-perceive their habits to be guided by goals. Furthermore, habits of moderate strength are automatically influenced by goals, yielding a curvilinear, U-shaped relation between habit strength and actual goal influence. Thus, research that taps self-perceptions or moderately strong habits may find habits to be linked to goals. Introduction Having cast off the strictures of behaviorism, psychologists are showing renewed interest in the psychological processes that guide This interest is fueled partly by the recognition that automaticity is not a unitary construct. Hence, different kinds of automatic responses may be triggered and controlled in different ways (Bargh, 1994; Moors & De Houwer, 2006). However, the field has not yet converged on a common understanding of the psychological mechanisms that underlie habits. Habits can be defined as psychological dispositions to repeat past behavior. They are acquired gradually as people repeatedly respond in a recurring context (e.g., performance settings, action sequences, Wood & Neal, 2007, 2009). Most researchers agree that habits often originate in goal pursuit, given that people are likely to repeat actions that are rewarding or yield desired outcomes. In addition, habit strength is a continuum, with habits of weak and moderate strength performed with lower frequency and/or in more variable contexts than strong habits This consensus aside, it remains unclear how goals and context cues influence habit automaticity. Goals are motivational states that (a) define a valued outcome that (b) energizes and directs action (e.g., the goal of getting an A in class energizes late night studying; Förster, Liberman, & Friedman, 2007). In contrast, context cues for habits reflect features of the performance environment in which the response typically occurs (e.g., the college library as a setting for late night studying). Some prior research indicates that habits are activated automatically by goals (e.g., Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2000), whereas others indicate that habits are activated directly by context cues, with minimal influence of goals In the present experiments, we first test the cognitive associations …