We are all creatures of habit. Behavioral learning, repetition, and automation are parts of human survival. Thus, nature has given us brains and nervous systems ready for learning. Our brains are wired to compound, link, and chain behaviors into routine, so we do many of them without special attention or conscious focus.
A habit is a connection between stimuli, or cues, that leads to an action prompted by its antecedent (preceding) stimuli. Habits are formed through repetition. Behavioral psychologists use language terms to describe this process. We form or acquire new behaviors through shaping— a process of successive approximations (steps toward the new behavior) that become reinforced—strengthened by consequences so that they are more likely to reoccur.
Taking control of habits is a vital aspect of managing your life well. Habits exert great influence on health, productivity, self-confidence, and self-esteem. Adaptive habits equip you to be in charge of yourself, make confident predictions about how you will perform, and contribute to your reliability and integrity. Faulty habits can undermine health and happiness, interfere with goals, and sabotage relationships.
Therefore, learning about how you can make habits work for you is important. What follows are simple and practical tips to make it easier for you to grasp and apply the principles of learning theory and behavior modification to change and improve your own habits.
The secret to habits—more or less—is more or less. That is, we can break down habits into two kinds: good habits and bad habits. This is subjective, of course. But, to be real, let’s divide habits into those behaviors you want to increase versus those you want to decrease. Let’s call the behaviors you want to increase adaptive behaviors; and the ones you want to decrease maladaptive behaviors. So, you want more of adaptive behaviors and less of maladaptive behaviors. This is a good and simple start…
Since habits are repetitions of highly probable behaviors, it’s helpful (and accurate) to observe and assess your own habits—both the adaptive and maladaptive ones—as things you do automatically (and probably often), including the habits you like and those you dislike. If you want to change some of your habits, you must start with the idea that habits become strengthened when you do them more frequently and weakened when you do them less frequently. Changing those patterns (the relative frequency and strength) of behaviors requires an alteration in the more or less values associated with particular behaviors.
Along with the simple logic and scientific basis to “more and less,” people often wonder (with great frustration) why they keep doing things they detest. While I don’t discount the underpinning spiritual dimension of this age-old problem in human nature, let’s focus on the scientific basis for this to make some headway in how to do more of what you want and less of what you don’t want. This will lead you to better self-control, arguably a highly desirable achievement for most people.
Since habits form through repetition, people generally seek to increase the behaviors they find desirable or helpful. For instance: exercising more, eating better, completing tasks in a more timely or regular manner, getting to sleep earlier, etc. Wanting to do more of desirable behaviors can include personal, internal efforts (such as praying, positive thinking, planning), as well as behaviors toward others (praising, soliciting feelings, accomplishing or helping with tasks).
The more you practice (engage in a behavior repeatedly), the more it’s likely that behavior will occur, and the more automatic it will eventually become. This sounds (and is) simple—but that doesn’t always translate to easy. However, through taking small steps, the new behavior becomes more probable and natural. Breaking down the desired behavior into small steps is called successive approximations—that is, incremental behaviors that approach the target and, eventually, the goal. For example, if you are training a dog to give you his paw, you might reinforce him for simply lifting his paw a few inches, at first. Gradually, you can make the reinforcement (“payoff,” perhaps a treat coupled with praise) contingent on the dog coming closer to reach your hand—until these “almost” behaviors reach the desired outcome.
Incremental steps—successive approximations—are a natural method of animal and human learning. We often “approximate” behaviors with or without conscious planning or knowledge of our attempts as such. When a youngster practices basketball moves as he imagines he is copying his favorite pro player, he’s practicing successive approximations. If practice doesn’t make perfect, at least it constitutes habit.
This, of course, is common sense, but there is power in accumulating small steps. During periods in my life when I was injured or simply got out of the habit of exercising, I found that I could gear up my motivation and get back to exercising by simply driving to the gym parking lot a few times; then, I’d set a goal of going inside and dressing in my gym clothes. (The “reward” was a few minutes in the steam room and my self-congratulation that I was making progress.) It may seem simple or wimpy, but for me it worked to re-develop the habit of exercising.
How might this apply to other behaviors you want to shape into good habits?
If you feel stymied about writing a report, consider the first steps of sitting at your desk and typing a title page; the next step might be writing a sentence or two phrases. You should give yourself an incentive (consequence) for accomplishing even the smallest steps. At first, the payoff consequence following your task execution should be disproportionately generous—you want to get motivated with incentive and success.
Inch by inch, life’s a cinch; yard by yard, life is hard.
If your child misbehaves, take a baseline estimate of the length of time he goes with acceptable behavior. Perhaps it’s only 20 minutes at a stretch. Anywhere you start is fine, as long as you begin reinforcing good behavior for just under the time period where the child is likely to start misbehaving. So, if he can go for about 20 minutes with good behavior, provide a reinforcement (praise, treats, coupons) at about 12-15 minutes into the stretch of good behavior. You want to repeatedly “catch ‘em doing good.” Very soon, you’ll be able to reinforce for longer periods, as your child (and you) will habituate to more sustained success.
Follow the 80% rule: People learn best when the reinforcement rate is at approximately 80%. This is enough to learn and achieve behavior change systematically. Higher success rates feel good, but don’t accomplish significant change. Lower success rates tend to be frustrating and de-motivating.
When I work with people to overcome procrastination, we break down the steps into small, strategic, and cumulative efforts. Clearing out the garage begins with standing in it and identifying (in writing) four or five items to begin moving or removing. Getting the taxes done may start with gathering one or two boxes or folders in a designated workspace. Anxiety and avoidance predominate when the job seems too big and thinking about it just overwhelms.
There may be emotional blocks to accomplishing desired behaviors, and we have effective treatments for those, too. Yet, as the saying goes, “A journey of many miles begins with the first step.”
Doing more of what you want is only part of the secret. Bad (undesirable) habits form in the same way as the ones you like: reinforcement strengthens behaviors through repetition, even when the consequence is unintended or unnoticed.
As an example, think about yelling (or stern voice or harsh criticism). No one likes yelling (even the people who do so). Yet, yelling is a positive reinforcement. (In behavioral terms, positive doesn’t mean rewarding; it means that you are applying a consequence, rather than removing one. It’s positive because you are adding it to a behavior that occurs. This is confusing to most people who think that positive reinforcement means a reward for good behavior. That is only one subset of positive reinforcement.) So, when you yell at someone, it may intimidate and make the behavior subside temporarily. But what really happens is that you are being conditioned to raise your voice in order to get attention and compliance—and the person whom you’re yelling at is learning that he doesn’t have to comply until you raise your voice!
Many bad habits become strengthened through repetition, despite our best intentions to desist. Nail biting becomes habitual when it’s repeated even without conscious attention. Overeating to the point of discomfort becomes reinforced through making the pangs of hunger or cravings go away, even though immediate gratification has eventual unpleasant results.
The principles of learning and habit formation are scientific forces that cut both ways: they can work for you or against you. Just like gravity, fire, friction, and other natural forces, they operate predictably and reliably—only not always the way you want for your desired outcomes.
In building new habits by making novel or less likely behaviors become more probable and automatic, engaging in them more is often easier, more logical, and more straightforward than trying to do things less or refrain from doing them entirely. Thus, it’s easier to intentionally do more than it is to do less of something that’s already ingrained. More strengthens all behaviors—the ones you like and the ones you don’t. So, forming new habits tends to be easier than breaking old ones.
In order to lessen, relinquish, or eliminate habits, you must do less of them. This is obvious, but not so easy.
Undesirable behaviors that become habits are formed through the same process that forms desirable ones: reinforcement—a consequence that strengthens the behavior it’s associated with and makes that behavior more likely to occur. Unfortunately, reinforcement occurs even when you are not trying to do so or have awareness that the reinforcement is occurring. When people misbehave, it draws attention automatically—a child throwing a tantrum or showing disrespect, a person repeatedly ignoring tasks or directions, etc. Negative emotions that arise through outward provocation or internal distress also tend to elicit automatic or impulsive responses that strengthen the behavior and make it much more likely to reoccur.
People feel they have to take stern action to quiet a disruptive or oppositional child. (“What else can I do? This behavior can’t be tolerated. He won’t move unless I yell at him!”) While this may be true at the moment, it boxes you into a habit of reinforcing bad behavior. And such a response is far from the only option (even though it seems like the natural and appropriate one).
Reinforcing yourself through drinking, overeating, taking drugs, picking at yourself, blowing off steam, etc. is a frequent automatic response that temporarily reduces anxiety and frustration; but it perpetuates the cycle of making these behaviors stronger and more likely.
It’s so much easier to do things more than to do them less. That’s why you need a strategy to reduce the reinforcement that makes undesirable behaviors perpetuate. The strategy that works best consists of two parts:
For instance, disrespectful or defiant behavior is incompatible with compassion, empathy, respect, sweet tone, deference, etc. It’s wiser and more productive to practice reinforcing the behavior you want, rather than knee-jerk responding to the behavior you don’t.
The old dietary trick of substituting healthier foods and snacks that satiate your hunger for the foods that sabotage you really does work—you simply must plan, plan, and practice, practice. When you reinforce the habit of drinking water minutes before you eat, planning your food and portions, eating what you planned, and then waiting twenty minutes before taking an extra helping, you’ll find that your behavior and your stomach and appetite start working with you toward the goals you desire.
Reinforcing behaviors that are incompatible with the bad ones is the surest way to defeat bad habits. Not only does this tactic shape the behaviors you want—but it also gives you a way to divert otherwise automatic attention away from continuing to reinforce the undesirable response.
Yet, what about the mistakes, the responses that evoke you to do the same old thing again? The answer to this is to pair a response cost with each instance of the unwanted behavior. Whether you are teaching yourself or someone else, the pair association delivers the message, “I can’t stop you from doing this… but I can make it very expensive for you to do so.”
Think about parking tickets, credit card interest, late fees, etc. These are all real-life examples of costs for untimely or inappropriate behavior. You are not advised to beat yourself up. Rather, attach a cost to engaging in unwanted behaviors.
Examples: when your child is uncooperative, defiant, disrespectful, or fails to follow through, make him pay by pairing some cost with the bad behavior or lack of compliance—perhaps a forfeiture of his phone or privileges for one day at a time. The association and cost should be announced beforehand, it should be very specific, and it should be limited. Thus, the cost is known, temporary, and then the clock resets, so he has the opportunity to perform properly the next time (thus to practice the appropriate behavior, for which you can then reinforce him).
If you want to stop yelling, set aside a jar into which you deposit a dollar each time you raise your voice. At the end of a week, donate the money. Or, give the money to the person at whom you yelled.
You could institute a work task for a response cost instead of a take-away. Each time your child disrespects or ignores you could require that your child clean the bathroom. The net result from the combination of response costs for inappropriate behaviors and reinforcements for behaviors incompatible with those you want to eliminate should be a reduction in the habits you want to stop.
Once you understand the principles of how more and less apply to habits and the operatives for obtaining either an increase or decrease in a particular behavior, you’re well on your way to taking better charge of your habits. For any methodology or program to bring progressive and sustained success, you must develop and practice the skills of observation and data tracking. We all have vested interests; but keen and objective observation requires noting and recording what actually happens, rather than biasing our view based upon what we think should happen. If you believe you are doing the right thing, but getting the wrong result, you might revisit the more and less principles as they are showing up in your interactions. If you are getting more—regardless of whether you like or dislike the behavior—then the behavior is being reinforced, perhaps inadvertently.
If you are getting less of a behavior you dislike, then things are on the right track. If you are getting less of a behavior you’re wanting to establish as a habit, then you need to re-examine the reinforcement connection to strengthen it.
In everyday life, we continually try things out. We tend to stick with the actions that bring us what we want. Yet often, we become so wedded to what seems like the right approach (via beliefs, advice, previous experience), that we negate or ignore the reality that it’s not producing the desired results.
To get around this self-deception, it’s necessary to keep track of what behaviors you do and tie the outcomes to those behaviors. Sometimes, you have to do the right thing long enough (e.g., exercising, gardening); but sometimes, you have to switch gears and employ another tactic. The key to understanding and implementing productive interventions is to observe, record, and make adjustments as you notice outcomes and trends. It’s helpful to write things down and keep logs. As the saying goes, “Black and white on paper is often a lot clearer than the gray matter in the mind.”
If you want to read further about the mechanics of behavior change, refer to my book, Living Intact: Challenge and Choice in Tough Times.
Keep in mind the maxim that the secret to habit formation and change is—more or less—the interventions and effects that make behaviors more or less. Keeping your eye on these relationships and effects will help you take better charge.
— Mark Steinberg, PhD
