A review and analysis of the use of ‘habit’ in understanding, predicting and influencing health-related behaviour

By Benjamin Gardner. Health Psychology Review, 2014

904 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The term ‘habit’ is widely used to predict and explain behaviour. This paper examines use of the term in the context of health-related behaviour, and explores how the concept might be made more useful. A narrative review is presented, drawing on a scoping review of 136 empirical studies and 8 literature reviews undertaken to document usage of the term ‘habit’, and methods to measure it. A coherent definition of ‘habit’, and proposals for improved methods for studying it, were derived from findings. Definitions of ‘habit’ have varied in ways that are often implicit and not coherently linked with an underlying theory. A definition is proposed whereby habit is a process by which a stimulus generates an impulse to act as a result of a learned stimulus-response association. Habit-generated impulses may compete or combine with impulses and inhibitions arising from other sources, including conscious decision-making, to influence responses, and need not generate behaviour. Most research on habit is based on correlational studies using self-report measures. Adopting a coherent definition of ‘habit’, and a wider range of paradigms, designs and measures to study it, may accelerate progress in habit theory and application.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a21356471550820563d61a613b753b6bf2644f2b

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Citations in the corpus

Procrastination out of Habit? The Role of Impulsive Versus Reflective Media Selection in Procrastinatory Media Use (2018, background): “Of crucial interest, however, is whether the impact of habit strength on media selection depends on situational boundary conditions (Gardner, 2015; Wood & Rünger, 2016), which has not been tested systematically in media psychology so far.”
Impact of religious values and habit on an extended green purchase behaviour model (2018, background): “Some studies have also indicated that habit moderates the rela‐ tionship between attitude and intention (Knussen & Yule, 2008) as well as between intention and behaviour (Gardner, 2015; Lally & Gardner, 2013; Verplanken et al., 1997, 1998 ).”
Breaking the Habit: On the Highly Habitualized Nature of Meat Consumption and Implementation Intentions as One Effective Way of Reducing It (2018, background): “Although there is still some debate over how exactly habits should be conceptualized and operationalized (Gardner, 2015; Orbell & Verplanken, 2015), there is general consensus that a habit can be defined as a cognitive process by which a specific situational context (e.g., going for lunch to the…”
Psychology of Habit. (2016, methodology): “Comment on Gardner 2014.”
Theoretical explanations for maintenance of behaviour change: a systematic review of behaviour theories (2016, positive): “…& Marlatt, 2004); Rothman’s theory of maintenance (n = 8) (Rothman, 2000; Rothman, Baldwin, & Hertel, 2004; Rothman, Sheeran, & Wood, 2009); selfdetermination theory (n = 7) (Ryan & Deci, 2000) and habit theories (n = 6) (Verplanken & Aarts, 1999; Verplanken & Orbell, 2003) (Gardner, 2015).”
Habit formation and change (2018, background): “Although theories of habit differ in details, all recognize this shift from goal-directed to habitual behavior through repeated learning [2 ,5,6].”