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In recent treatments of habitual social behaviour, habits are conceptualized as a form of goal-directed automatic behaviour that are mentally represented as goal-action links. Three experiments tested this conceptualization in the context of students' drinking (alcohol consumption) habits. Participants were randomly assigned to conditions where either a goal related to drinking behaviour (socializing) was activated, or an unrelated goal was activated. In addition, participants' drinking habits were measured. The dependent variable in Experiments 1 and 2 was readiness to drink, operationalized by speed of responding to the action concept 'drinking' in a verb verification task. Experiment 3 used the uptake of a voucher to measure drinking behaviour. Findings supported the view that when habits are established, simply activating a goal related to the focal behaviour automatically elicits that behaviour. These findings are consistent with a goal-dependent conception of habit. Possibilities for interventions designed to attenuate undesirable habitual behaviours are considered.
"Habit and routine free the mind for more constructive work"
Theodore Roosevelt (attrib.; see Connolly & Martlew, 1999, p. 97)
Roosevelt's observation makes intuitive sense. It is more constructive to plan one's day while brushing one's teeth than it is to deliberate about each brush stroke. It is more constructive to think about the content of the e-mail one is going to send than it is to contemplate whether or not to switch on one's computer. More generally, it is functional that behaviours that one has performed at the same time and in the same place countless times before can be performed in a relatively mindless fashion; it means that one can devote thought to the things that require thought.
For most people, behaviours like brushing one's teeth when one gets up in the morning and switching on the computer when one gets into the office are habits. They are learned sequences of acts that have become automatic responses to situations, and are functional in obtaining certain goals or desired effects (e.g. see Dewey, 1897; James, 1890, for a discussion on goal-directedness of habits). It has almost become a routine finding in studies of attitude-behaviour relations that a measure of habit (usually frequency of past behaviour) provides better prediction of future behaviour than measures of reasoned-based constructs like attitude or intention (see Ouellette &...