Habits—A Repeat Performance

Habits are response dispositions that are activated automatically by the context cues that co-occurred with responses during past performance. Experiencesampling diary studies indicate that much of everyday action is characterized by habitual repetition. We consider various mechanisms that could underlie the habitual control of action, and we conclude that direct cuing and motivated contexts best account for the characteristic features of habit responding—in particular, for the rigid repetition of action that can be initiated without intention and that runs to completion with minimal conscious control. We explain the utility of contemporary habit research for issues central to psychology, especially for behavior prediction, behavior change, and self-regulation. KEYWORDS—habit; automaticity; motivation; goals; behavior change; behavior prediction; self-regulation From self-help guru Anthony Robbins to the religion of Zen Buddhism, received wisdom exhorts people to be mindful, deliberative, and conscious in all they do. In contrast, contemporary research in psychology shows that it is actually people’s unthinking routines—or habits—that form the bedrock of everyday life. Without habits, people would be doomed to plan, consciously guide, and monitor every action, from making that first cup of coffee in the morning to sequencing the finger movements in a Chopin piano concerto. But what is a habit? The cognitive revolution radically reshaped the behaviorist view that habits rely on simple stimulus– response associations devoid of mental representation. Emerging is a more nuanced construct that includes roles for consciousness, goals, and motivational states. Fundamental questions persist, however, especially when comparing evidence across neuropsychology, animal-learning, and social-cognition literatures. Data from these fields support three views of habit, which we term the direct-context-cuing, implicit-goal, and motivated-context models. In this article, we consider these models and explain the relevance for psychology of a reinvigorated habit construct. HABITS AFTER BEHAVIORISM Within current theorizing, habits are automated response dispositions that are cued by aspects of the performance context (i.e., environment, preceding actions). They are learned through a process in which repetition incrementally tunes cognitive processors in procedural memory (i.e., the memory system that supports the minimally conscious control of skilled action). The relatively primitive associative learning that promotes habits is shared in some form across mammalian species. Our own interest in habits has been fueled by the recognition that much of everyday action is characterized by repetition. In experience-sampling diary studies using both student and community samples, approximately 45% of everyday behaviors tended to be repeated in the same location almost every day (Quinn & Wood, 2005; Wood, Quinn, & Kashy, 2002). In these studies, people reported a heterogeneous set of actions that varied in habit strength, including reading the newspaper, exercising, and eating fast food. Although a consensual perspective on habit mechanisms has yet to develop, common to all views is the idea that many behavioral sequences (e.g., one’s morning coffee-making routine) are performed repeatedly in similar contexts. When responses and features of context occur in contiguity, the potential exists for associations to form between them, such that contexts come to cue responses. In what follows, we outline three views of habitual control that build on this understanding. Direct Context Cuing According to the direct-context-cuing model, repeated coactivation forges direct links in memory between context and response representations. Once these links are formed via associative learning, merely perceiving a context triggers associated responses. Supporting evidence comes from research in which merely activating a construct, such as the elderly stereotype, influences the performance of relevant behaviors, such as a slow speed of walking (e.g., Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996). Address correspondence to David Neal, Department of Psychology, Box 90085, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708; e-mail: dneal@ duke.edu. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 198 Volume 15—Number 4 Copyright r 2006 Association for Psychological Science Readers might wonder if it is realistic that contexts cue responses through this simple mechanism in the absence of an implicit or explicit goal. The answer is not clear, given that social-cognition research has thus far demonstrated only a limited version of direct-cuing effects. For example, activating the elderly stereotype influences walking speed, but it remains to be demonstrated whether such activation can initiate walking itself. However, the direct cuing of repeated action by contexts is suggested by myriad findings in cognitive neuroscience that reveal reduced involvement of goal-related neural structures, such as the prefrontal cortex, when behaviors have come under habitual control (see Daw, Niv, & Dayan, 2005). Furthermore, animal-learning research using a clever paradigm in which reinforcers are devalued suggests direct control by context. When rats initially perform an instrumental behavior (e.g., pressing a bar for a food pellet), they appear to be guided by specific goal expectations; they cease the behavior if the reward is devalued (e.g., by pairing it with a toxin; Dickinson & Balleine, 1995). In contrast, when rats have extensively repeated a behavior, their responses appear to be cued directly by contextual stimuli (e.g., the bar); reward devaluation has little impact on continued performance. These data are commonly interpreted as indicating that habit formation involves a shift to direct context cuing. Implicit Goals Associative learning explains not only the direct binding of contexts and actions but also the binding of contexts and goals. In implicit-goal models, habits develop when people repeatedly pursue a goal via a specific behavior in a given context. An indirect association then forms between the context and behavior within the broader goal system. In support, Aarts and Dijksterhuis (2000) found in several experiments that the automatic activation of habitual responses (e.g., bicycle riding) only occurs when a relevant goal has first been made accessible (e.g., the thought of attending class). These studies did not measure people’s real-world behavior, however, but focused instead on judgments about behavior. It remains to be seen whether such judgments tap the cognitive processes that actually drive behavior. In addition, there is good reason to think that habit performance itself does not depend on goal activation. Goaldriven responses tend to be dynamic and flexible, as evidenced by people sometimes substituting behaviors that serve a common goal. In contrast, habits emerge in a rigid pattern such that, for example, a habitual runner is unlikely to substitute a cycling class for running. Thus, although implicit goals provide potentially powerful guides to action, they do not plausibly explain the context cuing of habits. Motivated Contexts In another framework for understanding context-cued responses, contexts can acquire diffuse motivational value when they have preceded rewards in the past. When contexts predict rewards in this way, they energize associated responses without activating specific goals. Evidence of the motivating quality of contexts comes from animal studies of the neurotransmitters that mediate reward learning. For example, when monkeys first learn that a feature of the environment (e.g., a light) predicts a reward (e.g., a drop of juice) when a response is made (e.g., a lever press), neurotransmitter activity (i.e., dopamine release) occurs just after the reward (see Schultz, Dayan, & Montague, 1997). After repeated practice, the animal reaches for the lever when the light is illuminated. Furthermore, the neurotransmitter response is no longer elicited by the juice but instead by the light. In this way, environmental cues can acquire motivational value. Reward-predicting environments are thought to signal the cached (or long-run future) value of an action without signaling a specific outcome (e.g., juice; Daw et al., 2005). This diffuse motivation may explain the rigid nature of context cuing, given that cached values do not convey a specific desired outcome that could be met by substitutable means. Contributing further to the rigidity of habits, neural evidence indicates that, with repetition, whole sequences of responses become chunked or integrated in memory with the contexts that predict them (Barnes, Kubota, Hu, Jin, & Graybiel, 2005). Chunked responses are cued and implemented as a unit, consistent with the idea that habits require limited conscious control to proceed to completion. This quality of habitual responding is frustratingly evident when, for example, trying to fix a well-practiced but badly executed golf swing or dance-step sequence. As yet, the motivated-context idea has been tested primarily with animals. Its promise as a model of human habits comes from evidence that reward-related neurotransmitter systems are shared across species (e.g., in humans, dopamine is elicited by monetary reward). Multiple Habit Mechanisms The high degree of repetition in daily life observed in the diary research of Wood et al. (2002) is likely to be a product of multiple habit-control mechanisms that draw, in various cases, on direct context associations as well as on diffuse motivations. Although we consider implicit goals to be an implausible mediator of habitual behavior, they undoubtedly contribute to some types of repetition. Whether habits are cued directly or are diffusely motivated, they are triggered automatically by contexts and performed in a relatively rigid way. These features of responding have important implications for theories of behavior prediction, behavior change, and self-regulation.