Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
Sources – How to Change
We thank the following experts for their help with this script:
Dr. Phillippa Lally
Senior Research Fellow, BSH, UCL
Dr. Amanda Rebar
Associate Professor, School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences, Appleton Institute
A little note before we get into the rest of it: Change is hard. We all try different tactics and see how they work for us. Still, as a species we share similar working principles and science can provide a rough manual for them. So take this video as a primer and then try to find out more about how you as an individual tick when it comes to habits.
– Imagine your brain as a lush and dense jungle. Moving through it, say to make a decision to do something, is like moving through an *actual* jungle: It is hard and it costs energy. Your brain hates expending energy, so it came up with a trick: All your actions and behaviors leave paths in the jungle of your brain.
Our brains are energy-demanding organs, they take up around one fifth of the whole resting metabolism. Activities constantly going on in the brain like communication between neurons, releasing and clearing the chemicals in synapses and keeping the ion balance under a fast-paced dynamic environment is energetically costly. However energy is not for free in the environment, it is a limited resource and in demand. Therefore brains have mechanisms and tricks to make the most of their energy budget.
#Attwell, D. & Laughlin, S. B.: An Energy Budget for Signaling in the Grey Matter of the Brain, 2001.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1097/00004647-200110000-00001
Quote: “The energy budget confirms that brain is, by the nature of its work, “expensive tissue” (Aiello and Wheeler, 1995). The signaling-related energy use of 30 mol ATP/g/min is equal to that in human leg muscle running the marathon (Hochachka, 1994). Such a high metabolic rate will limit the brain’s size (Aiello and Wheeler, 1995) and favor mechanisms that use energy efficiently (Sarpeshkar, 1998). With most of the energy being used to drive ion pumps, any factor that reduces ionic fluxes without reducing information content and processing power improves energy efficiency. Reducing the number of active synapses and ion channels to just greater than the level where synaptic and channel noise starts to destroy information, by fine tuning the properties of membranes, synapses, and circuits, is beneficial.”
#Hasenstaub, A. et al.: Metabolic cost as a unifying principle governing neuronal biophysics, 2010.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2901447/pdf/pnas.200914886.pdf
Quote: “Neural tissue is inordinately expensive. Brain ranks behind only heart and kidney in glucose used per gram (10, 41, 42), and the human brain accounts for one-fifth of the body’s total energy consumption (43, 44). Much of this cost derives from the essential ongoing neural activity (14, 45, 46) that maintains the circuit context in which sensory processing, planning, decision making, and motor control can occur (46–55). Expensive functions prompt the evolution of expense-minimizing adaptations (56), and energy availability does appear to have constrained the evolution of macroscopic brain features, resulting in minimization of brain volume subject to functional requirements (44, 57–59). We propose that the same principle holds on a microscopic level.”
Quote: “We propose that if the energy cost of action potential generation is a constraint on brain volume, coding strategy, or computational capacity, then cellular ion channel expression will be optimized not merely to achieve function, but also to achieve function while minimizing metabolic cost; and that if this is the case, then ion channel expression patterns will obey the trade-offs predicted by our model and experiments.”
– A routine is a sequence of actions that you carry out the same way every time because they’ve worked out well for you. For example, you get the same ingredients for your favorite dish and cook them in a certain order, because you like the taste of the result. Or before going to bed you set an alarm at 6:30 because this is when you want to get up.
Routines are regularly performed behavioral patterns, mostly on a daily basis. They are made up of a sequence of actions with a fixed temporal pattern and performed willingly to make daily life run smoother and more organized. Therefore, they will persist as long as the result in the desired outcome. Not all routines are executed with full-automaticity, though they can be later and then turn into habits. Some examples for routines are behaviors like sitting in the same place at the dinner table, getting the same seats in theater, buying the same groceries from the same store or parking the car at the same spot .
Let’s take the following simple example to break it down further. When you see that your hands are dirty (stimulus), you turn the tap on, wash and then dry your hands, resulting in clean hands. It is a sequence of actions and results in a certain outcome. It is not necessarily automatic at this stage. However, this sequence of actions can become automatized, with one action invoking the following one, so the entire sequence itself can turn into a response to the initial stimulus, seeing your dirty hands. Then, it will be more difficult to break out of the sequence or skip an action within it. For instance, one would still reach for the tap to open it, even if this specific tap has a motion sensor and starts automatically, since the outcome of the whole sequence is not central anymore under the automated, habitual behavioral scheme. The actions are not executed with a conscious goal (clean hands), so skipping the intermediate steps that would not change the outcome, are still performed.
#T.W. Robbins & Rui M. Costa: Habits, 2017
https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0960-9822%2817%2931258-7
– Imagine routines executed by a wise planner. It is slow and analytical, responsible for strategizing and mental calculations. The planner is aware of the future and carefully considers what kind of result you want. Based on that, it chooses actions to achieve specific outcomes, even if they are uncomfortable, like taking a shower after getting up.
Research on motivations underlying behavior generally proposes a dual scheme: goal-directed vs. automated or habitual behavior. With the wise planner and later on with the toddler, we broadly refer to the goal directed behavior and habitual behaviors respectively.
#Linnebank, F. E. et al.: Investigating the balance between goal-directed and habitual control in experimental and real-life settings, 2018.
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/s13420-018-0313-6.pdf
Quote: “Dual-system accounts of action control attribute this gradual loss of flexibility with repetition to a shift in the balance between two systems (e.g., de Wit & Dickinson, 2009; Dickinson, 1985; Dolan & Dayan, 2013). The goal-directed system determines what response is favorable on the basis of (1) knowledge of response–outcome contingencies, and (2) evaluation of the current desirability of each outcome. The concurrently operating habit system, however, drives behavior through simple stimulus–response associations that are strengthened by repetition. Initially, the goal-directed system will exert dominant control, but when a behavior is repeatedly performed in a stable context, the stimulus–response associations in the habit system will become sufficiently strong to drive behavior directly.”
The concept is also outlined in this book:
#Kahneman, Daniel; Thinking Fast and Slow, 2011
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11468377-thinking-fast-and-slow
– Routines can eventually turn into habits, which feel much easier because they are basically a sequence of actions carried out without thinking about them. You have done them so often before that your brain considers them rewarding and a great response to a situation. So a habit can feel like you’re on autopilot. You don’t have to convince yourself to do something that’s a habit - you just do it.
Routines have features such as underlying repetitiveness and fixed schedule that they share with habits. However, routines are still oriented around a certain outcome and lack the automaticity of habits. In the following study, for instance, researchers studied these two aspects of habits, automaticity vs routine, and came up with a measurement paradigm for individual differences in habitual behavior in daily life.
#Ersche et al., Creature of Habit: A self-report measure of habitual routines and automatic tendencies in everyday life, 2017
Quote: “Although routines fall within the realm of habits, their inherent functionality (either implicit or explicit) and their strong link with a time frame, may explain why routines and habits are not synonymous. Habits thus only include those routine behaviours that are performed automatically without serving a specific purpose and are no longer restricted to a fixed temporal pattern.”
Even though the reward devalues once the behavior turns into habit, to initiate and execute the behavior repetitively, it should involve reward response at the beginning.
#Schwöbel et al. Balancing control: A Bayesian interpretation of habitual and
goal-directed behavior, 2021.
Quote: “In a novel environment or context, goal- directed actions will first allow the organism to learn about its structure and rewards and, later, to integrate this informa- tion to reliably reach a goal. With time, certain behaviors will be reinforced, while others will not. Subsequently, habits are formed to enable faster and computationally less costly selection of behavior which has been successful in the past.”
– The important thing about habits is that they are set in motion by triggers, context cues that can be single things or entire situations, that give your brain the signal to start the behavior or action.
Let's take a simple sequence of events to demonstrate the effect of triggers in habitual behavior in comparison to deliberate action: flipping a switch.
One enters an ill-illuminated room, (1) sees a light switch, (2) flips the light switch, and (3) the light comes on, as illustrated in the image below in Row A. In this case, there is a certain sequence of events: (1) the sight of the stimulus, (2) invoked action as a response and (3) the outcome. If one performs this behavior to obtain a future outcome, in this case illuminating a dark room, the outcome (light coming on) is not as valuable. If the room is already well illuminated, one would not flip the switch. Or when the connection between the action (flipping the switch) and the outcome (light on) is reduced, let's say by installing an automatic light switch with a motion sensor, the action will not be performed. Goal-directed actions are performed in order to obtain the future outcome. This is different in case of habitual behavior. Habits are triggered by prior stimuli and not performed to obtain future outcomes. As in the last row of the image, if one has already the habit of flipping the switch, then the person would do so upon seeing the switch, even if the room was well lit or a motion sensor was installed recently.
#T.W. Robbins and Rui M. Costa, Habits, 2017
https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0960-9822%2817%2931258-7
– You already have a lot of triggers in your life: like when you see your phone, you almost alway unlock the screen or you reach for the seat belt once you sit down in a car. Or when you buy your coffee before work, you also get a cookie, even if you aren’t actually hungry.
Considering a good chunk of our day to day life is habitual, it is not surprising that we are surrounded by triggers. Of course, it does not mean that we are puppets to our environments, yet it is informative to be aware of the fact that even the smallest things may alter our behavior.
The second experiment of the following study nicely demonstrates it. The authors assumed that people who attend sports stadiums would tend to speak louder in that context. They did the following experiment to test this habitual tendency. Participants who have a habit of attending sport events in stadiums are given a visual search task in which they are asked to locate a certain object in the provided image. Some participants are shown images with kitchens and others with stadiums. The ones who were primed with the stadium images spoke louder when they were reporting that they located the object.
#David T. Neal et al, How do habits guide behavior? Perceived and actual triggers of habits in daily life, 2012.
Quote: ”Study 2 revealed the differential influence of goals and context cues on actual habit performance. Specifically, participants who habitually visited the sports stadiums at their school spoke more loudly when primed with pictures of these contexts, and this effect occurred regardless of whether or not they had a goal to visit stadiums after the study. Thus, the influence of context cues on behavior increased as a linear function of habit strength and was not influenced by goals.”
– Habits are executed by an impulsive toddler. It responds to your momentary desires, based on what is around you. Without considering any longer-term goals. For the toddler, the future doesn’t exist and it hates hard work. So when it notices a trigger, it steers you to take this easy road inside your brain that leads to a familiar rewarding result. If you get coffee, the toddler also wants the cookie, just because you do that every morning.
Even though there are multiple theories on the nature and number of mechanisms that underlie human behavior, one feature that most theories converge on is the duality of it – that there are two modes. Two modes have been defined differently in different models but it is generally suggested that one mode occurs with conscious awareness at each step of the processing mostly with the presenscence of motivation and capacity. The second one occurs automatically and pre-consciously, and is based on associations that are learnt over many experiences.
The following study represents a specific case of the dual-processing models: Reflective vs Impulsive System. A schematic summarizing this modal is shown in the following:
The following diagram shows an example of how the reflective and impulsive systems can be in competition to invoke behavioral response.
#Strack and Deutsch, Reflective and Impulsive Determinants of Social Behavior, 2004
Quote: “An important feature of representations in the reflective system is that they can be flexibly generated and changed. Thus, the reflective system can solve a multitude of tasks, such as reasoning, planning, or mental simulation. However, it is slower than the impulsive system and requires attentional resources.”
Quote: “Typically, the following three elements constitute a behavioral sequence: the situational condition, the behavior proper, and the consequences of the behavior. The model assumes that similar learning principles hold for all types of representations. Thus, associative clusters will emerge in the impulsive system that bind together frequently co-occurring motor representations with their conditions and their consequences. These sensory-motor clusters are called behavioral schemata, and similar to other contents of the impulsive system, they are subject to spreading activation and differ in their activation potential. In addition, if one part of a behavioral schema is activated, the activation will spread to the remaining elements of the cluster. Behavioral schemata and their links to other contents in the impulsive system can be understood as habits (see Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2000; Ouelette & Wood, 1998).”
#David T. Neal et al, The Pull of the Past: When Do Habits Persist Despite Conflict With Motives?, 2011.
https://www.scinapse.io/papers/2122722000#fullText
Quote: “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.e., a cinema; Study 1) and only when eating in a way that allowed them to automatically execute the response cued by that context (i.e., eating with their dominant hand; Study 2). Across all conditions, participants with weaker cinema-popcorn-eating habits ate because of motivations such as liking for the popcorn. The findings reveal how habits resist conflicting motives and provide insight into promising mechanisms of habit change.”
– If you want to make change easier, the best way may not be to force it with willpower but to convince your brain that it’s not that big of a deal. By creating new routines and then turning them into habits. You want your wise planner to construct that first trail and then use your toddler to help start the action effortlessly.
When building a habit towards achieving a long-term goal, such as settling in an exercising habit to improve health, one can get into conflict with short-term goals, like enjoying tempting snacks. This has lent to the impression that people who are able to stick to their long-term goals despite temptations achieve this with strong willpower. But research has shown that they do this through effortless strategies, such as good habits, instead of through high levels of self-control.
The following study probes exactly this differentiation. Participants were asked to select a behavior that they would like to turn into a daily habit over the course of the 3-month study. Behaviors cover the areas of health, financial, ecological and interpersonal behaviors like eating fruit, saving money, recycling and being patient, respectively. Then they were reporting their daily progress into a smartphone app that was devised specifically for this study. Their habit strength and self-control capacity were assessed biweekly through questionnaires. Results of the study indicated that habit strength increased over time, especially for participants who consistently performed the selected behavior, whereas self-control capacity did not seem to affect the habit formation process.
#van der Weiden et al., How to Form Good Habits? A Longitudinal Field Study on the Role of Self-Control in Habit Formation, 2020.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00560/full#h5
Quote: “Nevertheless, entering lagged self-control capacity and goal-congruent behavior performance in the time period during both habit strength measurements further increased the fit of the model. Self-control capacity did not contribute to higher habit strength7. However, participants who carried out the self-chosen behavior more consistently (higher proportion of goal-congruent behavior performance8), showed stronger increases in habit strength. In line with the trend in habit formation shown before, the time of measurement (i.e., the umpteenth time) had a small negative influence on habit strength increase. This is in line with the lower increase in habit strength later on during the study period.”
In fact, habits can help us when our willpower is low. We tend to fall back into our habits easily since they have a smaller cognitive burden. This works against us in case of bad habits. However, it is possible to use this mechanism to our advantage as well – by building good habits. A well-trained autopilot would not divert us from the desired route, even when the cockpit is empty for a while.
The following study shows habits taking over control when self-control is low. Across 5 experiments, authors demonstrated how reliance on habits can work to our advantage when they are in line with our goals and how they can be detrimental when they are off track.
#Neal, D. T., Wood, W., & Drolet, A. How Do People Adhere to Goals When Willpower Is Low? The Profits (and Pitfalls) of Strong Habits, 2013.
Quote: “With limits in willpower, people have difficulty inhibiting cognitively accessible responses and deliberating about alternative courses of action. Although people typically do not want to alter their good habits in these ways, they sometimes seek variety and adjust their behavior to their present circumstances and interaction partners. Thus, the boost in good habit performance has its roots in the limited capacity of willpower and the tyranny of automaticity that are already known to increase bad habits. In the case of good habits, however, these same processes provide people with a pathway to actually improve goal adherence when they lack self-control.”
– Let us say, you want to work out to be fitter, a very common goal. The first thing to do is to break this pretty vague goal into clear, separate actions, because the idea is to make the action itself as easy a threshold as possible: so small it is manageable and so specific that you don’t have to think about it a lot.
To form a habit, a sequence of behaviors must be performed repeatedly so that one action elicits the next one. Once there is a flow, it is more difficult to break it. Also, some actions within the sequence would be easier to automate than the others. Therefore, chunking a behavior into smaller steps and adding steps that are easier to automate, would strengthen the link between the consecutive actions and help the sequence run smoothly.
#Lally and Gardner, Promoting habit formation, 2011.
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-22495-009
Quote: “Preceding actions can operate as cues for habits, for example flossing after brushing your teeth (Verplanken, 2005). It seems likely however that in the flow of everyday routines, there may be certain points at which it is easier to insert a new behaviour. Behaviours are often linked together in ‘chunked’ sequences, so that the performance of one behaviour cues the next (Graybiel, 1998). In addition, behaviours are organised in a hierarchical structure with simple actions grouped into sequences, which are part of larger tasks (Botvinick, Niv, & Barto, 2009). For example the actions ‘grasp a spoon’, ‘use spoon to scoop sugar’, ‘move spoon over cup’ and ‘deposit sugar in cup’ are grouped into the superordinate sequence ‘add sugar’, which is part of the overarching task of ‘make tea’ (cf. Cooper & Shallice, 2000). As behaviours are practised, initiation of an action sequence can become automated but this automation may not happen equally for all parts of a sequence. Lower level actions within a task (e.g., ‘grasp spoon’) are automated quicker than are higher level actions (‘add sugar’) at the beginning of a task (‘make tea’; Ruh, Cooper, & Mareschal, 2010).”
– Not necessarily by rewarding yourself after you did it, but by making the action or behavior itself more enjoyable. Like only listening to your favorite podcast while working out, or chipping away at your taxes while you wait for civilization to load the next round. You need to figure out what works for you.
In the following study, participants who were given gym-only access to page-turner audiobooks visited the gym 51% more frequently than the participants who were not. Coupling a highly tempting activity like listening to exciting audio novels, to an activity requiring self-control, such as attendance to the gym, makes the latter behavior more appealing and decreases the potential regret from accompanying the indulgent behavior later on. Researchers called this intervention temptation-bundling since it bundles the instantly gratifying “want” behaviors to the “should” behaviors that are rewarding in the long term but require willpower. Researchers give further examples like restricting the watching of the favorite TV show to exercise time, receiving a pedicure while completing an overdue manuscript review, or indulging in the craved burger when spending time with a difficult relative.
#Milkman K. et al., Holding the Hunger Games Hostage at the Gym: An Evaluation of Temptation Bundling, 2014.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4381662/
Quote: “This study provides the first evaluation of a newly engineered type of commitment device—a temptation bundling device. It shows that in the setting explored, where exercise was bundled with tempting audio novels, this new type of commitment device is valued by a significant portion of the population studied. Further, we find that when temptation bundling is imposed on a population, it can increase gym attendance by 51% at low cost when it is initially instituted, although as in most exercise interventions (Acland and Levy 2013, Royer et al. 2012), the benefits taper off. In addition, we find that individuals are limited in their ability to self-impose temptation bundling tying rules, in line with prior findings suggesting that goal setting has some shortcomings (Burger et al. 2011). Our findings highlight that the potential for temptation bundling to improve outcomes for those facing self-control problems is considerable, especially given that they offer a low-cost, simultaneous solution to two common willpower problems (underengagement in shoulds and overengagement in wants) and harness the potential motivational benefits of complementarities between wants and shoulds.”
– It depends on the behavior you are trying to get used to, what kind of person you are, your stress levels and many more things.
Although the full range determinants of successful habit formation is not fully known, studies probing various factors have found significance in many instances. One study for example suggests that people with experiences of childhood adversity tend to fall into automatic behaviors more than the people who did not have similar experiences. Moreover, this effect becomes more pronounced in people who are using stimulant drugs.
#Ersche et al., Creature of Habit: A self-report measure of habitual routines and automatic tendencies in everyday life, 2017
Another factor that has been suggested to have an effect on habit formation is prospective memory. A study on building a flossing habit suggests that people with stronger prospective memory (remembering to perform a planned action at another point in time in future) build habits easier. Placement of the behavior was also influential on the habit performance; among the people with an existing tooth- brushing habit, who floss after brushing teeth performed flossing more frequently than the people who do it before.
#Judah G. et al., Forming a flossing habit: An exploratory study of the psychological determinants of habit formation, 2012
https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8287.2012.02086.x
Quote: “Results: Participants with stronger prospective memory ability, higher levels of past behaviour, and a more positive attitude flossed more frequently during the study. Stronger automaticity was predicted by positive attitudes, and increased behaviour frequency during and prior to the study. Those who flossed after brushing (rather than before) tended to form stronger flossing habits and, at 8-month follow-up, had stronger habits and flossed more frequently.”
– It takes between 15 and 250 days until a new habit begins automatically with its trigger. You won't know how long it will take for you. Starting is the easy part, especially in the first week or two. Continuing to do it every day is the hard part. But it does get easier as you keep going.
There is no formula into which you can plug in numbers and get the number of days required for a person to build a certain habit. It is quite a personal journey and varies from habit to habit. Still, there have been studies that followed people over the course of building a habit and measured the behavioral automaticity throughout the process – starting from the first execution of the behavior on day one until when the behavior gets automatic, i.e. habit sets in.
In theory, the measured automaticity would be very small in the beginning. As the person repeats the behavior from one day to the other, it would keep increasing – until it would reach a certain maximum. This plateau is where the behavior would become a habit. Therefore, a successful habit forming curve would have the shape (Asymptotic) in the right plot in the following image – whereas the first plot (Quadratic) shows a decreasing automaticity following an initial increase, meaning that the behavior did not get automatized in the end and therefore has not turned into a habit. Researchers construct similar curves with the data they collect as they monitor people building habits. This way they can resolve how much time it takes for various behaviors to reach the automaticity plateau.
#Keller J et al. Habit formation following routine-based versus time-based cue planning: A randomized controlled trial. 2021
https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/bjhp.12504
In the following study, for instance, researchers monitored 96 volunteers for 12 weeks, as they are forming a daily eating, drinking or activity habit. It is observed that the time it takes to get the behavior 95% of the plateau value varies from 18 to 254 days with a median of 66 days. However, not all participants’ data could be fitted to an asymptotic curve. The following three plots show data from individual participants and the fitted model. Study also found out that missing one day does not really affect the habit formation process.
#Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C.H.M., Potts, H.W.W. and Wardle, J. How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. 2010
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.674
Quote: “Performing the behaviour more consistently was associated with better model fit. The time it took participants to reach 95% of their asymptote of automaticity ranged from 18 to 254 days; indicating considerable variation in how long it takes people to reach their limit of automaticity and highlighting that it can take a very long time. Missing one opportunity to perform the behaviour did not materially affect the habit formation process. With repetition of a behaviour in a consistent context, automaticity increases following an asymptotic curve which can be modelled at the individual level. ”
Another study followed 135 participants for 12 weeks as they built a healthy nutrition habit of their choice – e.g. drinking water, eating fruits or vegetables. Half of the participants were given a routine-based cue, such as performing the behavior after getting up in the morning, and the other half a time-based cue, for example at 1pm. Similarly to the study above, the time when 95% of the asymptote was reached was measured and a model fitted to the data. Results demonstrated that the time for successful habit formation varied between individuals from 4 to 335 days with a median of 59 days. That means we are talking about a great range. Additionally, time- or routine-based cues were similarly effective in habit formation, meaning one type of cue working pretty well for some might not be that effective for others. So habit building is quite a personal journey and there is really no one single schedule that fits everyone.
#Keller J. et al. Habit formation following routine-based versus time-based cue planning: A randomized controlled trial. 2021
https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/bjhp.12504
Quote: “Successful habit formation was represented by positive asymptotic curves with a modelled end point higher than 3.5, which was true for n = 27 participants (out of 117; 23%). The criterion of an asymptotic curve end point higher than 3.5 (above the scale mean) was chosen as it reflects a plateau level at which participants on average responded to automaticity items with ‘rather applies’, ‘applies’, or ‘applies exactly’ indicating an overall agreement that the behaviour was somewhat automatic. Based on model parameters, these participants reached or will reach 95% of the asymptote (i.e., as an indicator for successful habit formation) after a median of 59 days with a range between 4 and 335 days.”
