Habits and Goals in Human Behavior: Separate but Interacting Systems

PPSXXX10.1177/1745691621994226Wood et al.Habits and Goals in Human Behavior 994226research-article2021 ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Perspectives on Psychological Science 1 –16 Habits and Goals in Human Behavior: © The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: Separate but Interacting Systems sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691621994226 10.1177/1745691621994226 www.psychologicalscience.org/PPS Wendy Wood1,2, Asaf Mazar1, and David T. Neal3,4 1Department of Psychology, University of Southern California; 2Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California; 3Catalyst Behavioral Sciences, Coral Gables, Florida; and 4Center for Advanced Hindsight, Duke University Abstract People automatically repeat behaviors that were frequently rewarded in the past in a given context. Such repetition is commonly attributed to habit, or associations in memory between a context and a response. Once habits form, contexts directly activate the response in mind. An opposing view is that habitual behaviors depend on goals. However, we show that this view is challenged by the goal independence of habits across the fields of social and health psychology, behavioral neuroscience, animal learning, and computational modeling. It also is challenged by direct tests revealing that habits do not depend on implicit goals. Furthermore, we show that two features of habit memory—rapid activation of specific responses and resistance to change—explain the different conditions under which people act on habit versus persuing goals. Finally, we tested these features with a novel secondary analysis of action-slip data. We found that habitual responses are activated regardless of goals, but they can be performed in concert with goal pursuit. Keywords habit, action slips, goal pursuit, behavior change An esteemed professor, perhaps thinking about an ( Kruglanski & Szumowska, 2020, p. 1257, see also important research project, tries to enter his office Ainsle, 2020; De Houwer et al., 2018). In this view, the building through the doorway he has used for years, professor’s overlearned behavior persisted because a despite knowing that the entry was recently closed for residual goal to use the old entrance overrode his goal renovations (example from Kruglanski & Szumowska, to use the new entrance. 2020). On realizing his mistake, he alters course toward As we show in this article, the view that all behavior a still-open doorway. This scenario reflects a central (even habits) must be goal driven is intuitively compel- question in action control: How do habits and goals ling because it fits with people’s well-entrenched belief guide action selection and performance? in their own agency. However, this alternative account The answer you give to this question depends on suffers a major flaw: In practice, it is not falsifiable. your definition of habit. In most modern accounts of Research might successfully demonstrate goal indepen- habit, habitual responses are directly cued by contexts dence of overlearned behavior by accounting for one, (de Wit, 2017; Gardner, 2015; Knowlton & Diedrichsen, two, or 100 goals. However, researchers could infer post 2018; Verplanken & Orbell, in press; Wood & Rünger, hoc a near-endless supply of other goals. Thus, in prac- 2016). The familiar cues as the professor walked through tical terms, the notion that all behavior is goal driven campus triggered him to take the habitual, but now is not open to empirical test; ruling out dependence on blocked, path. Upon encountering the barrier, conscious one goal leaves open the possibility of other, as yet goal pursuit was activated, and he overrode his habitual untested, goals. As even one proponent acknowledged, response and chose a new way into the building. Yet some researchers have recently proposed that Corresponding Author: “all human actions are driven by specific goals,” with Wendy Wood, Department of Psychology, University of Southern the result that “habitual behavior is goal-driven” and California designed to achieve valued behavioral outcomes E-mail: [email protected] 2 Wood et al. this argument has the downside of creating an “irrefut- Early behaviorists embedded the habit concept in able claim that the behavior must be mediated by some mechanistic models of stimulus-response learning that type of goal” (De Houwer, 2019, p. 4). treated all action as a product of environmental control This debate has been perpetuated by false dichoto- (Hull, 1943; Skinner, 1938). This approach was quickly mies implying that behavior must be either completely challenged by Tolman’s (1948) purposive behaviorism, goal directed or completely impervious to goals. In the in which all action is motivated by flexible mental history of science, conflicts framed in terms of dichoto- representations—a perspective that laid some of the mies (e.g., nature vs. nurture, situation vs. person) have groundwork for the ensuing cognitive revolution. Social rarely been resolved by critical tests showing that one psychologists in particular embraced the Gestalt roots process wins over another. Instead, scientific prog- of Tolman’s (1948) theorizing and replaced the behav- ress in this area is likely to emerge through empirical iorists’ stimulus-response mechanisms with motiva- tests examining how and when behavior is guided by tional models of how people coordinate actions within habits and when by goals, as well as how habits and their environment (Campbell, 1963). Even today, some goals interact. social psychologists subsume habits within goal- In this spirit, we begin by explaining the tensions dependent action, offering straw-person caricatures of between habit and goal accounts of action in the history modern habit theory (e.g., “purposeless behavior,” “an of psychology. We then review the extensive evidence empty class,” “void of sense,” Kruglanski & Szumowska, from multiple subfields (e.g., animal learning, cognitive 2020, pp. 1256, 1257, 1258). science, human neuroscience, behavior prediction) Contemporary research, however, has revealed char- showing that habits are directly triggered by context acteristic features of habit formation and performance cues (e.g., external settings, times of day, prior actions that distinguish it in systematic, theory-driven ways in a sequence) in ways that do not require the activa- from goal-dependent action (de Wit, 2017; Gardner, tion of goal states. As we explain, the direct context 2015; Knowlton & Diedrichsen, 2018). In brief summary cuing of habit differs from the goal-dependent automa- of the emerging consensus, habits are formed largely ticity often studied in social psychology. Nonetheless, through instrumental learning (Amodio, 2019).1 As in evidence that habitual responding involves a process people repeat a rewarded action in a stable context, separate from goal pursuit, different moderating condi- they incrementally develop associations in procedural tions promote each type of action control. Finally, we memory between the response and recurring cues in report a new analysis of existing data that supposedly that context (Verplanken & Orbell, in press; Wood & showed the goal dependence of habit. Instead, as we Rünger, 2016).2 show, the findings reveal the separate but interacting Once formed, habits are directly brought to mind by effects of habits and goals on behavior. context cues without the need for recruiting the goal that may have motivated initial learning (or any other Evolution of the Habit Construct goal; Mazar & Wood, 2018). This direct cuing is possible because habits are guided by cached representations in William James (1914) made the prescient argument that memory that store direct cue-response associations habits differ from conscious will in that habitual “action (Haith & Krakauer, 2018). In other words, the habit sys- goes on of itself” (p. 42). Specifically, he observed that tem generates behavior by directly activating response units (de Wit, 2017). Once the response is triggered in a sequence of mental action which has been mind, people tend to act on it through ideomotor pro- frequently repeated tends to perpetuate itself, so cesses whereby the thought of a behavior brings about that we find ourselves automatically prompted to the corresponding physical response in a reflexive, auto- think, feel, or do what we have before been matic manner (James, 1890/2007). However, habitual accustomed to think, feel, or do, under like action is not obligatory—given sufficient motivation and circumstances, without any consciously formed opportunity, people can override the response in mind. purpose or anticipation of results. (p. 24) In modern theorizing, then, habits are not goal dependent; they are activated directly by context cues Nonetheless, he noted that goals can set a habit in without supporting goals. Thus, people can act on hab- motion or correct habitual responses when they go its independently from their current goals. Nonetheless, awry. Thus, James’s view of habit aligns with the direct habits can still be goal aligned, in that they yield a context-cuing account that prevails today across most future desired state without depending on goals as of psychology. underlying causal drivers.3 For example, a seatbelt- In the following decades, researchers took more par- wearing habit could be aligned with a goal of safety, tisan views by valuing either habits or conscious will. but this does not mean that people, consciously or Habits and Goals in Human Behavior 3 unconsciously, activate a safety goal each

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