MANAGING HABITS
WITH BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS
Summary / TLDR
- Habits are operant behavior that are automatic, which makes them reliable but also inflexible.
- Automaticity is what distinguishes habits from goal-directed behavior.
- Interrupting a habit with novelty switches it to a goal-directed response.
Why talk about habits?
The Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JEAB) published a special issue on habit behavior in January 2024. The intention was to review and arrange the basic research so that it may provide opportunities for translational research and application to everyday life. The special issue also produced new articles, critically examining the habit and goal-directed response classifications.
What makes a response a habit?
While habits respond automatically to their triggering cues, they are still operant behavior. The term goal-directed is used to describe intentional operant behavior. Responses that are well-rehearsed may be emitted automatically, bypassing cognitive processes such as planning and deliberation. This automaticity is what distinguishes habits from goal-directed responses (Handel & Smith, 2024).
Habit responses rely on a consistent context, where a change in context is more likely to produce a misstep.
Habits Free Up Resources
Thinking about how to respond is inefficient and more prone to errors. Learning a sequential response provides a good demonstration of this. The steps are communicated in some way, and then continually referenced by the learner as they string the responses together into a complete chain. In contrast, a sequential response that is extensively rehearsed may be emitted with automaticity. This habitual response is extremely reliable (produces less errors). Its weakness, however, is that the context must also be reliable. Habit responses rely on a consistent context, where a change in context is more likely to produce a misstep.
Interruption is How
The strength of habitual responding is also its weakness. Reliable and efficient, a habitual response requires that the context is completely unchanged. Consider these contextual variables:
- The environment blocks a response. For example, there is a detour on the drive to work.
- Learner is different. A learner’s own state is part of a response’s context. High amounts of distraction, a novel emotional state, and arousal levels can disrupt a habitual response.
- Outcome is novel. A reliable response expects to produce a reliable outcome. When the expected outcome changes, the response is also interrupted.
Arranging to Make or Break Habits
Habits are a tool. They do one job very well. Using habits improves our response efficiency, freeing up our attention to work on other tasks (Labrecque et al., 2024).
Creating helpful habits frees us up from the resources (planning, motivation) to engage in responses that make our lives better. Consider an individual approaching exercise as a novel task each day. The person wakes up and says “I wonder how I can exercise today.” Then consider an exercise routine, where the individual drives directly from work to the park for a run. Which is more likely to produce reliable responses over the long-term?
Breaking habits works the same way. In the exercise example, the weather may change and disrupt the response with needing to deal with wet feet, blistery wind, or patches of ice. The habitual response will now require planning and deliberation (Is it going to rain? Did I pack the correct sneakers? Would it be safer to skip today’s run?)
Breaking unwanted habits involves deliberately sabotaging automaticity with novelty. Vacations provide a great examples of this. When you are staying in a new place, the unwanted habits will require problem-solving and deliberation (Where can I get bedtime snacks?). When we travel, our reliable environmental arrangements are missing, and then so are our habits.
Objective Observer
Perhaps the key to breaking free from habits (or successfully creating new ones) is for the learner to understand habits contextually. When individuals struggle to begin new habits, or break unhelpful ones, there is a tendency to rely on “willpower” or incentives to control the habit response. Alternatively, habits may be weakened with the introduction of novelty. This shifts the question from “What can’t I stop/start this habit?” to “How can I interrupt/support this habit using environmental variables?”
After all, it’s nothing personal, it’s just habit.
A Closer Look
Open and review the introduction to the special JEAB issue on habits. Use the flashcards to review some of its main topics.
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Did this topic mean something to you?
If you are interested in learning more about habits, CEUey offers a 4-credit course on Handel and Smith (2024). The course provides an opportunity for users to read the article in full. Content analysis and application, in addition to opportunities to learn the main points, are provided in the course’s ten lessons.
This course will also be offered in the 2026 Annual Bundle.
Understanding Habits with
Basic Research
REFERENCES
Handel, S.N. & Smith, R.J. (2024). Making and breaking habits: Revisiting the definitions and behavioral factors that influence habits in animals. Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 121:8-26.
Labrecque, J.S., Lee, K.M., Wood, W. (2024). Measuring context-response associations that drive habits. Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 121:62-73.
Watson, P., Thrailkill, E.A., Corbit, L.H., Bouton, M.E. (2024). Introduction to the special issue: Goal direction and habit in operant behavior. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 121:3-7.
This post was prepared by Valerie A. Evans.