The Science Of Habits

Science Of Habits: Habits are behaviors the brain automates through repetition in a stable context, shifting control to deep brain circuits so we act without deciding, and studies suggest around 43 percent of our daily actions are performed out of habit.

Wendy Wood: Her diary studies at the University of Southern California found about 43 percent of what people do each day is repeated almost automatically, often while thinking about something else.

Phillippa Lally: Her 2009 University College London study found new habits took an average of 66 days to become automatic, with a huge range from 18 to 254 days.

Maxwell Maltz: The popular '21 days to form a habit' idea comes from this plastic surgeon's 1960 book Psycho-Cybernetics, where he observed it took patients a minimum of about 21 days to adjust to changes.

Ann Graybiel: The MIT neuroscientist found that as rats learned a maze, neurons in the striatum fired mostly at the start and end of the run, 'chunking' the whole routine into one automatic unit.

Dorsolateral Striatum: Research shows control of a behavior shifts from goal directed brain circuits toward this region as it becomes a habit, which is why habits keep running even after you stop wanting the result.

Anthony Dickinson: In his experiments, rats trained lightly stopped pressing a lever once its food reward was made unappealing, but heavily overtrained rats kept pressing anyway, the classic test for a true habit.

Henry Molaison: The famous amnesic patient H.M. couldn't form new memories, yet he improved day after day at a mirror drawing task, proving skills and habits use a different memory system.

Eugene Pauly: After viral encephalitis wiped out his ability to form new memories, he still learned to walk around his block and find the kitchen through habit alone, a case studied by neuroscientist Larry Squire.

Charles Duhigg: His 2012 bestseller The Power of Habit popularized the 'habit loop' of cue, routine and reward, drawing on neuroscience and corporate case studies.

Febreze: Procter & Gamble's odor spray initially flopped as a smell eliminator, then took off once it was repositioned as a pleasant finishing touch at the end of cleaning, attaching it to an existing routine.

Pepsodent: Ad man Claude Hopkins is credited with helping spread daily tooth brushing in America by telling people to feel for the 'film' on their teeth, a built-in cue with a minty tingle as the reward.

Ivan Pavlov: His dogs learned to salivate at signals that predicted food, showing how neutral cues in our environment can come to trigger automatic responses.

B.F. Skinner: He found unpredictable rewards produce the most persistent behavior, the same variable reward principle behind slot machines and endless social media feeds.

Wolfram Schultz: His recordings of monkey dopamine neurons showed they fire less for the reward itself over time and more for the cue that predicts it, explaining why cues trigger cravings.

William James: In his 1890 Principles of Psychology the philosopher called habit 'the enormous fly-wheel of society,' arguing it keeps people in their routines and stations in life.

Lee Robins: Her study of Vietnam veterans found about 20 percent had been addicted to heroin in Vietnam, but only about 5 percent relapsed within a year of coming home, showing how much a change of environment can break a habit.

Bas Verplanken: His 'habit discontinuity hypothesis' holds that major life changes like moving house open a window when old habits are disrupted and new ones form more easily.

David Neal: In a 2011 study with Wendy Wood, habitual moviegoers ate week old stale popcorn in a cinema almost as eagerly as fresh, but not when eating in a meeting room.

BJ Fogg: The Stanford behavior scientist's Tiny Habits method starts ridiculously small, like flossing one tooth, and anchors the new habit right after something you already do.

James Clear: His 2018 book Atomic Habits, built on the idea of getting 1 percent better every day, has sold well over 15 million copies worldwide.

Donald Hebb: His 1949 theory that repeatedly firing neurons strengthen their connections, later summed up as 'neurons that fire together wire together,' underpins how routines get etched into the brain.

Jerry Seinfeld: The 'don't break the chain' method, marking an X on a calendar every day you write, is widely credited to him, though Seinfeld himself has said it wasn't his idea.

Benjamin Franklin: He tracked 13 virtues in a small notebook with a daily chart, focusing on one virtue per week and marking each lapse with a black dot.

Aristotle: In the Nicomachean Ethics he argued that we become just by doing just acts and brave by doing brave acts, an ancient version of the idea that character is built from habit.