Behavior change is tough, especially when you’re trying to adopt a new habitual behavior. A daunting array of psychological ideas underlie the formation of a new habit. Fortunately, these concepts and practices cluster nicely into an easy-to-remember trio of familiar actions. If you want to make a behavior a habit, all you have to do is:
- Resolve firmly that you will pursue the new habit.
- Rehearse the new habit to set yourself up for success.
- Repeat the new habit enough to times to make it automatic.
Step-by-step, here’s how this works.
1. Resolve
Anyone who has made a New Year’s resolution gets the concept of resolve. “From this day forth,” you vow, “My life will be perfect. I will eat right, exercise every day, communicate better with my partner and friends, and be more focused and productive at work.” Overcome with the excitement and hope for a new year, you doom yourself to failure by taking on too much behavior change at once. Which leads us to the first habit-formation concept:
Stewardship of Resources
Your resolution is useless if you can’t bring focused effort to establishing your new habit. Taking on too much at once, attempting a new behavior that falls outside of your abilities, or otherwise overtaxing your resources will stop the formation of your new habit before it ever has a chance to get started. Be a good steward of your limited behavior-change resources to give your new habit its best chance to succeed. Realistically, do you have the time, the energy, the emotional wherewithal, and other resources that it will take to implement this new behavior? Say, for example, that you want to sit less at work and set the goal to make it a habit to stand up from your desk chair once every 20 minutes. That’s a pretty simple activity, but it may require, for example, overcoming self-consciousness as your co-workers comment your new standing habit. Thinking through these resource issues increases the odds that your desired new behavior will take hold as a habit.
Intention Aligned with Your Vision and Goals
Resolution implies a firmly set jaw and a strong stride into purposeful action. This is a lot easier when your new behavior lines up with your big-picture vision for your life and the goals you are striving for. Back to the standing example: Does reducing the risk of diabetes, cancer, and heart disease fit into your health goals? OK, that’s probably a slam dunk, but you get the idea. Before setting your intention to pursue a new behavior, ensure that the potential new habit aligns with your overall goals.
Evidence-Based Foundation
I don’t know about you, but I like some evidence behind my behavior-change decisions. Perhaps this goes back to my time living in Missouri, “The Show-Me State.” I follow up on popular press articles by reading as much original research as I can, I consult Consumer Reports before I make a major purchase, and I like to think that I’m immune to advertising and marketing influences (my friends in those industries just chuckle knowingly). You don’t have to be as suspicious as I am. But if you’re going to go to all of the trouble to resolve to adopt a new habit, do at least a little research to ensure that there is evidence to support your new habit. Back to the standing-at-work example: I have read dozens of scientific articles that make an extremely convincing case against prolonged sitting, so I felt very confident in my resolve to adopt the habit of working at a standing desk.
Belief
Resolution implies strong conviction and belief, and, indeed, you’ll need these to establish a new habit. When it comes to habit formation, there are a couple of aspects to belief. First, there is belief in yourself and in your ability to complete tasks and reach goals. This is a basic psychological concept known as self-efficacy. Second is the conception of belief in powers bigger than yourself. Admittedly, this may be overkill in many behavior-change projects. But this kind of belief is key to one of the most effective behavior-change methodologies ever devised: Alcoholics Anonymous. For years the success of AA drove the behavior-change establishment nuts. “How could a program made up in a crummy New York City apartment by some drunk guy at the end of his rope become the most successful behavior-change method in history? We’ve got Ph.D.s and stuff and we couldn’t do it.” Once they got over their academic outrage, the behavior-change gurus teased out the elements of AA that made it so effective. The program turns out to emphasize several elements now known to prompt positive change – a strong relationship with a mentor, regular meetings, as well as that all-important belief in a higher power. Whether it is God, Allah, an unspecified spiritual power, science, or simple confidence in the power of the human spirit, belief can provide a strong foundation for your habit-formation project.
Decision Fatigue
In their book, “Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength,” Roy Baumeister and John Tierney show how much our psychological wherewithal depends on our ability to manage “decision fatigue.” It turns out that willpower is like a muscle. It needs to be exercised and nourished, and it can become useless when exhausted. Just as we can’t do an infinite number of push-ups, we have a limited capacity to exert self-control. When you are cultivating a new habit, you will regularly face decision points at which you can either continue along in your established ruts or decide to pursue your new path. Mustering your willpower can help you maintain your resolve and overcome decision fatigue.
Public Proclamation
Finally, your resolve deepens when it is made public. Publicly proclaiming your intention to develop a new habit adds external accountability and can turn your co-workers, friends, and family into cheerleaders. Think about John F. Kennedy’s speech in 1961 in which he promised to put a man on moon by the end of the decade, which NASA did just eight years later. Your new habit doesn’t have to be that ambitious to benefit from a public announcement.
2. Rehearse
Just as the cast and crew of a play visualize and practice their staging of a production to ensure a successful performance, rehearsing your new habit sets the stage for its success.
Practice
Practice is not the exact same as rehearsal. Actors memorize their lines and practice them alone before coming to rehearsal. Similarly, you’ll want to to clearly define the specific new behavior that you want to turn into a habit and practice it. You are doing something new, and even though it might appear to be a ridiculously easy behavior like simply standing up, you should practice it a few times before you begin repeating it. Also, just as an actor reads a script before deciding whether to accept a role, if your new desired habit is at all complex or novel you may want to try it out before you invest in trying to make it a habit. For example, if you are thinking of switching to a treadmill desk, you might want to practice working at a colleague’s walking workstation for a few hours before you spend (or ask your boss to spend) a couple of thousand dollars on new furniture.
Cast & Crew
Stage productions are never a one-person affair. Even a solo performer has a director, lighting and sound crew, and others helping them put on a show. Likewise, you’ll want to enlist a support crew for your habit-formation project. For a simple habit like standing up regularly during the day, you might just need to let your colleagues and boss about your new goal so that don’t puzzle over your new behavior (“Larry sure seems fidgety lately,” they might wonder, “I hope he’s OK.”). For a new habit of any complexity or consequence, you may need to enlist more involved help from your support team.
Visualization
Envisioning the execution of your new behavioral routine and, in particular, the reward that comes with it, is a proven way to cement the new routine in your mind, even before you begin it in earnest. Whether you’re picturing the standing ovation as the curtain falls on your opening-night show or visualizing your healthy arteries, engaged muscles, and improved vitality as you reap the rewards of your office fitness routines, picturing the outcome in advance can help you establish your new habit.
Staging, Props, & Costumes
A theater production happens in a staged, tightly controlled environment. Each and every prop, costume, panel of background scenery, piece of furniture, and bit of make-up is planned and laid out to impel the play production forward. Likewise, you can set the stage for success by thinking through the logistical details that support your new habit. This can be as simple as a prop like a Post-it note on your phone that says “stand” to remind you get up whenever you take a call or as complex as redesigning your entire office to encourage routine movement throughout the work day.
Keystone Habits
You can also rehearse your habit habit. Researchers have found that people who make their bed in the morning are more likely to quickly and easily adopt new healthy habits than slobs like me.* These simple habits that pave the way for bigger change are known as “keystone habits.” In his book, “The Power of Habit,” Charles Duhigg reports that “when people start habitually exercising, even as infrequently as once a week, they start changing other, unrelated patterns in their lives.” James Prochaska, a researcher who has explored this idea, calls this “success on one behavior [that] increases probability of success on another” coaction. These habits can be hard to identify, but it’s worth seeking them out. The methodology of finding them goes way beyond the scope of this post, but Duhigg’s book is a great place to start.
*Actually, I’m working on this keystone habit now. I have made my bed every morning since I began researching this topic, and I have also done the dishes every night after dinner since then.
3. Repeat
A new behavior only takes hold as a habit once it has been repeated enough to times to make it automatic.
There Are No Magic Numbers
How many days do you have to repeat a new behavioral routine before it takes hold as a habit? Conventional wisdom says 21 days, maybe as many as 30. These, it turns out, are completely arbitrary, made-up numbers. I can’t find the source of the 30-day figure, but it makes sense to assume that it has something to do with a month. The 21-day figure can be traced back to Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon best known as the author of “Psycho-Cybernetics,” a popular 1960 self-help book. Maltz also had occasion to work with amputees and observed that they seemed to acclimate to the loss of a limb after about three weeks. Figuring that if people could adapt to even an extreme change like that after 21 days, Maltz declared that any habit could be adopted in the same time frame, leading to decades of newspaper and blog headlines beginning or ending with “21 Days.”
Only a few years ago, in 2010, did researchers finally test this hypothesis. Phillippa Lally and her colleagues have discovered that it actually takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days for a new habit to take hold, depending on how difficult and complex it is, with the typical habit taking 66 days to set in. A simple new routine like having a glass of water after breakfast can become automatic in around 20 days, but a more arduous and time-consuming routine like doing sit-ups after lunch every day can take a couple of months. So, as you undertake cultivating a new habit, think about how difficult the new routine will be, how motivated you are to tackle it, and your ability to execute it. Then rank it on a scale from regular water-drinking (20 days) to daily sit-ups (60 days) to establishing a meditation practice (150 days) to estimate how long it will take to make it habitual. Then double that number, just to be on the safe side. Repeat the new routine that number of days, and the odds are good you will entrench it in your daily routines.
By the way, Lally also found that occasionally missing a day of your new routine isn’t the end of the world. “Although repetition of a behavior is required in order to form a habit, some missed opportunities will not derail the process.” So don’t beat yourself up if you miss a day, but do jump right back in the next day to reestablish the momentum.
Replace Undesired Behaviors
I’m trying to accentuate the positive in this model, focusing on establishing new, healthy behaviors. It’s worth thinking for a moment, though, about what’s going on with the undesirable habit you are trying to replace. For example, if you’re trying to stand more during the day, then you are automatically doing less sitting every time you repeat your new standing behavior. For another example, look at that picture above. All of those walking meetings leave no time for sitting in a poorly lit conference room with droning HVAC noises putting you to sleep. So, whenever you observe yourself doing the old behavior you’re trying to replace, simply use that as a cue to do your new routine.
Reminders
When you’re first learning a new routine, you’ll need reminders to repeat it on a regular basis. If you simply want to stand up every 20 minutes, you can set a reminder on your wristwatch, your smart phone, or your computer (if you’re online, you can do a Google search for set timer for 20 minutes). There are also, of course, numerous smartphone apps that can remind you to do your new routine. Physical props can also cue you. I mentioned above putting a Post-it on your phone to remind you stand up every time you answer it. With a new routine that involves any kind of gear, the equipment itself can serve as a reminder. A classic example of this is putting out your workout clothes the night before to remind you of your new morning-run routine.
Tracking
None of this resolution, rehearsal, and repetition counts unless you measure it. Once you have set out your desired new behavior, resolved to undertake it, rehearsed it a bit, and set an estimated number of days to make it a habit, you need to track your progress toward that number. Someone once asked Jerry Seinfeld how he wrote so many good jokes. His reply: “I write every day, and when I’m done I put a big red X through that day on my calendar. And then I don’t break the chain.” Your tracking can be as simple as that, an unbroken chain of check marks on an old-fashioned paper calendar. I have had several clients who track their behaviors in simple spreadsheets or paper journals, and, of course, there are tons of apps that can help you. In fact, there’s a whole movement growing around personal metrics known as Quantified Self.
However you do it, simply tracking your progress can, in and of itself, help you establish your new behavior. Researchers in the areas of personal financial management, smoking cessation, and weight loss have seen people change their behavior – spending less and saving more, smoking fewer cigarettes, and eating better – simply because they started tracking it.
This is a lot of information here about how to establish a habit, but you don’t have to think about all of this stuff every time you set out to create a new habit. Just remember the big steps: resolve, rehearse, repeat. Habit formation can be as simple as that.
Sources
Aarts, H, and A Dijksterhuis. “Habits as Knowledge Structures: Automaticity in Goal-Directed Behavior.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78, no. 1 (January 2000): 53–63.
Aarts, Henk, Theo Paulussen, and Herman Schaalma. “Physical Exercise Habit: On the Conceptualization and Formation of Habitual Health Behaviours.” Health Education Research 12, no. 3 (1997): 363–374.
Allen, David. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. New York: Viking, 2001.
Baumeister, Roy F, and John Tierney. Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. New York: Penguin Books, 2012.
Baumeister, Roy F., and John Tierney. Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. Reprint edition. New York: Penguin Books, 2012.
Beeken, Rebecca, Helen Croker, Stephen Morris, Baptiste Leurent, Rumana Omar, Irwin Nazareth, and Jane Wardle. “Study Protocol for the 10 Top Tips (10TT) Trial: Randomised Controlled Trial of Habit-Based Advice for Weight Control in General Practice.” BMC Public Health 12, no. 1 (2012): 667.
Behavior Change: A Summary of Four Major Theories. Family Health International/AIDSCAP. Accessed October 7, 2013. http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNABZ712.pdf.
“Behavioral Change Models.” Boston University School of Public Health. Accessed October 8, 2013. http://sph.bu.edu/otlt/MPH-Modules/SB/SB721-Models/SB721-Models_print.html.
“Behavioural Change Theories.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, August 13, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Behavioural_change_theories&oldid=568354150.
Blumenthal-Barby, J. S., and Hadley Burroughs. “Seeking Better Health Care Outcomes: The Ethics of Using the ‘Nudge.’” The American Journal of Bioethics 12, no. 2 (February 2012): 1–10. doi:10.1080/15265161.2011.634481.
Burkeman, Oliver. Help!: How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Little More Done. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2011.
———. The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking. New York: Faber and Faber, 2012.
Carr, Nicholas G. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011.
Chatterjee, Samir, and ACM Digital Library. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Persuasive Technology. New York, NY: ACM, 2009. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1541948.
Colomb, Julien, and Björn Brembs. “The Biology of Psychology: ‘Simple’ Conditioning?” Communicative & Integrative Biology 3, no. 2 (March 2010): 142–45.
Cooley, Dean, and Scott Pedersen. “A Pilot Study of Increasing Nonpurposeful Movement Breaks at Work as a Means of Reducing Prolonged Sitting.” Journal of Environmental and Public Health 2013 (2013): 1–8. doi:10.1155/2013/128376.
Dean, Jeremy. Making Habits, Breaking Habits: Why We Do Things, Why We Don’t, and How to Make Any Change Stick. Da Capo Lifelong Books, 2013.
Deutschman, Alan. Change or Die: The Three Keys to Change at Work and in Life. New York: Collins, 2008.
Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. 1st ed. Random House, 2012.
Faure, Alexis, Françoise Conde, Fabrice Cheruel, and Nicole el Massioui. “Learning-Dependent Activation of Fra-1: Involvement of Ventral Hippocampus and SNc/VTA Complex in Learning and Habit Formation.” Brain Research Bulletin 68, no. 4 (January 15, 2006): 233–48. doi:10.1016/j.brainresbull.2005.08.017.
Fogg, BJ. “BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model.” BehaviorModel.org. Accessed January 12, 2014. http://www.behaviormodel.org/.
———. “Sandbox (Private Blog).” Tiny Habits. Accessed March 4, 2014. http://tinyhabits.com/sandbox/.
———. “Tiny Habits Program Intro Document.” Accessed March 4, 2014. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1syo7Eyhx4Hek-U51lrEFIEcDtonnB6-vZ-3n0FsnPjU/mobilebasic?pli=1.
Fry, Jillian P, and Roni A Neff. “Periodic Prompts and Reminders in Health Promotion and Health Behavior Interventions: Systematic Review.” Journal of Medical Internet Research 11, no. 2 (May 14, 2009): e16. doi:10.2196/jmir.1138.
Gantt, W. Horsley. “A Medical Review of Soviet Russia: VI.—Work of Pavlov and Other Scientists*.” British Medical Journal 1, no. 3466 (1927): 1070.
Gardner, Benjamin, and Phillippa Lally. “Does Intrinsic Motivation Strengthen Physical Activity Habit? Modeling Relationships between Self-Determination, Past Behaviour, and Habit Strength.” Journal of Behavioral Medicine 36, no. 5 (July 4, 2012): 488–97. doi:10.1007/s10865-012-9442-0.
Gawande, Atul. The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. Reprint. Picador, 2011.
Gollwitzer, Peter M. “Implementation Intentions: Strong Effects of Simple Plans.” American Psychologist 54, no. 7 (1999): 493.
Gorski, Terence. “Denial Checklist.” The Addiction Web Site. Accessed February 10, 2014. http://www.tgorski.com/clin_mod/dmc/denial_checklist.htm.
Gregory, Gary D., and Michael Di Leo. “Repeated Behavior and Environmental Psychology: The Role of Personal Involvement and Habit Formation in Explaining Water consumption1.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 33, no. 6 (2003): 1261–1296.
Grohol, John. “15 Common Defense Mechanisms – Psych Central.” Psych Central.com. Accessed February 10, 2014. http://psychcentral.com/lib/15-common-defense-mechanisms/0001251.
Gross, Terry. “Habits: How They Form And How To Break Them.” Interview. Fresh Air. NPR.org, March 5, 2012. http://www.npr.org/2012/03/05/147192599/habits-how-they-form-and-how-to-break-them.
“Habitual Behaviour.” Evaluation of Energy Behaviour Change Programmes. Accessed January 13, 2014. http://www.cres.gr/behave/framework_theory_2.htm.
Heath, Chip, and Dan Heath. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. 1st ed. Crown Business, 2010.
Hills, Andrew P., Nuala M. Byrne, Rachel Lindstrom, and James O. Hill. “Small Changes’ to Diet and Physical Activity Behaviors for Weight Management.” Obesity Facts 6, no. 3 (2013): 228–38. doi:10.1159/000345030.
Isaac, Brad. “Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret.” Lifehacker. Accessed July 6, 2013. http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret.
Jager, Wander. “Breaking ‘bad Habits’: A Dynamical Perspective on Habit Formation and Change.” Human Decision-Making and Environmental Perception–Understanding and Assisting Human Decision-Making in Real Life Settings. Libor Amicorum for Charles Vlek, Groningen: University of Groningen, 2003. http://www.rug.nl/staff/w.jager/jager_habits_chapter_2003.pdf.
Judah, Gaby, Benjamin Gardner, and Robert Aunger. “Forming a Flossing Habit: An Exploratory Study of the Psychological Determinants of Habit Formation.” British Journal of Health Psychology 18, no. 2 (2013): 338–353. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8287.2012.02086.x.
Kolb, Bryan, and Robbin Gibb. “Searching for the Principles of Brain Plasticity and Behavior.” Cortex. Accessed May 19, 2014. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2013.11.012.
Krauss Whitbourne, Susan. “The Essential Guide to Defense Mechanisms.” Psychology Today, October 22, 2011. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201110/the-essential-guide-defense-mechanisms.
Kroliczak, G., C. Cavina-Pratesi, D. A. Goodman, and J. C. Culham. “What Does the Brain Do When You Fake It? An fMRI Study of Pantomimed and Real Grasping.” Journal of Neurophysiology 97, no. 3 (January 3, 2007): 2410–22. doi:10.1152/jn.00778.2006.
L, C. “Goal Attraction and Directing Ideas Conceived as Habit Phenomena.” Psychological Review 38, no. 6 (1931): 487–506. doi:10.1037/h0071442.
Lally, P., A. Chipperfield, and J. Wardle. “Healthy Habits: Efficacy of Simple Advice on Weight Control Based on a Habit-Formation Model.” International Journal of Obesity 32, no. 4 (December 11, 2007): 700–707. doi:10.1038/sj.ijo.0803771.
Lally, Phillippa, and Benjamin Gardner. “Promoting Habit Formation.” Health Psychology Review 7, no. sup1 (2013): S137–58. doi:10.1080/17437199.2011.603640.
Lally, Phillippa, Cornelia H. M. van Jaarsveld, Henry W. W. Potts, and Jane Wardle. “How Are Habits Formed: Modelling Habit Formation in the Real World.” European Journal of Social Psychology 40, no. 6 (2010): 998–1009. doi:10.1002/ejsp.674.
Lipton, David. “New Year’s Resolutions and the Neural Circuitry of Habitual Behavior.” Stanford Neuroblog, 1/14. http://neuroblog.stanford.edu/?p=5359.
Lock, Stephen. “How To Hack Your Career And Life With Simple Daily Challenges – Search Engine Journal.” Search Engine Journal. Accessed July 9, 2013. http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-hack-your-career-and-life-with-simple-daily-challenges/64514/.
Maltz, Maxwell. Psycho-Cybernetics; A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life. 1ST edition. S.l.: Prentice Hall Trade, 1960.
Medina, John. Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. Reprint edition. Pear Press, 2010.
Munson, Sean A., and Sunny Consolvo. “Exploring Goal-Setting, Rewards, Self-Monitoring, and Sharing to Motivate Physical Activity.” In Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (PervasiveHealth), 2012 6th International Conference on, 25–32. IEEE, 2012. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6240359.
Muraven, Mark, and Roy F. Baumeister. “Self-Regulation and Depletion of Limited Resources: Does Self-Control Resemble a Muscle?” Psychological Bulletin 126, no. 2 (2000): 247.
Murtagh, Shemane, David A Rowe, Mark A Elliott, David McMinn, and Norah M Nelson. “Predicting Active School Travel: The Role of Planned Behavior and Habit Strength.” International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 9, no. 1 (2012): 65. doi:10.1186/1479-5868-9-65.
“Neurogenesis.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, August 4, 2014. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neurogenesis&oldid=619743049.
“Neuroplasticity.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, July 9, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neuroplasticity&oldid=561770882.
Norman, Donald A. “Categorization of Action Slips.” Psychological Review 88, no. 1 (1981): 1.
Paiva, Andrea L., James O. Prochaska, Hui-Qing Yin, Joseph S. Rossi, Colleen A. Redding, Bryan Blissmer, Mark L. Robbins, et al. “Treated Individuals Who Progress to Action or Maintenance for One Behavior Are More Likely to Make Similar Progress on Another Behavior: Coaction Results of a Pooled Data Analysis of Three Trials.” Preventive Medicine 54, no. 5 (May 1, 2012): 331–34. doi:10.1016/j.ypmed.2012.02.017.
Patterson, Kerry, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. 1st ed. McGraw-Hill, 2007.
Phelps, Michael. Michael Phelps: Beneath the Surface. First Edition edition. Champaign, IL: Sports Publishing LLC, 2005.
Schwartz, Tony. “Six Keys to Changing Almost Anything.” HBR Blog Network – Harvard Business Review. Accessed September 13, 2013. http://blogs.hbr.org/2011/01/six-keys-to-changing-almost-an/.
“Self-Efficacy.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, July 31, 2014. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Self-efficacy&oldid=619290456.
Smith, K. S., A. Virkud, K. Deisseroth, and A. M. Graybiel. “Reversible Online Control of Habitual Behavior by Optogenetic Perturbation of Medial Prefrontal Cortex.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 46 (October 29, 2012): 18932–37. doi:10.1073/pnas.1216264109.
Smith, Kyle S., and Ann M. Graybiel. “Using Optogenetics to Study Habits.” Brain Research 1511 (May 20, 2013): 102–14. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2013.01.008.
“Stanford Marshmallow Experiment.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, September 4, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stanford_marshmallow_experiment&oldid=571504429.
Tappe, Karyn, Ellen Tarves, Jayme Oltarzewski, and Deirdra Frum. “Habit Formation among Regular Exercisers at Fitness Centers: An Exploratory Study.” Journal of Physical Activity & Health 10, no. 4 (May 2013): 607–13.
Townsend, David J., and Thomas G. Bever. Sentence Comprehension: The Integration of Habits and Rules. MIT Press, 2001.
Verplanken, Bas, and Wendy Wood. “Interventions to Break and Create Consumer Habits.” Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 2006, 90–103.
Webb, Thomas L., and Paschal Sheeran. “Mechanisms of Implementation Intention Effects: The Role of Goal Intentions, Self-Efficacy, and Accessibility of Plan Components.” British Journal of Social Psychology 47, no. 3 (September 2008): 373–95. doi:10.1348/014466607X267010.
Werch, C. E., S. Ames, M. J. Moore, D. Thombs, and A. Hart. “Health Behavior Insights–The Transtheoretical/ Stages of Change Model: Carlo C. DiClemente, PhD.” Health Promotion Practice 10, no. 1 (June 30, 2006): 41–48. doi:10.1177/1524839908323519.
Wiedemann, Amelie U, Benjamin Gardner, Nina Knoll, and Silke Burkert. “Intrinsic Rewards, Fruit and Vegetable Consumption, and Habit Strength: A Three-Wave Study Testing the Associative-Cybernetic Model.” Applied Psychology. Health and Well-Being, November 14, 2013. doi:10.1111/aphw.12020.
Wilson, Timothy D. “‘The Power of Habit,’ by Charles Duhigg.” The New York Times, March 9, 2012, sec. Books / Sunday Book Review. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/books/review/the-power-of-habit-by-charles-duhigg.html.
Wood, Wendy, and David T. Neal. “A New Look at Habits and the Habit-Goal Interface.” Psychological Review 114, no. 4 (2007): 843–63. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.843.
Wood, Wendy, Leona Tam, and Melissa Guerrero Witt. “Changing Circumstances, Disrupting Habits.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88, no. 6 (2005): 918–33. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.88.6.918.
Yin, Henry H., and Barbara J. Knowlton. “The Role of the Basal Ganglia in Habit Formation.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 7, no. 6 (June 1, 2006): 464–76. doi:10.1038/nrn1919.
Leave a Reply