The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg is a book I picked up recently from my local library. At about 25% in, it's already had a decent impact on my worldview, and I think it promises to be a good read. For this blog post, I want to write about the model The Power of Habit presents of habits.
First of all, habits are relatively simple things. It's when hundreds, even thousands of these coalesce around a single individual do they emerge as something as complex as the "lifestyle" of that individual.
Habits come from a three-step loop, says The Power of Habit. The first step of the loop is the "cue". This is what triggers the automatic behaviour, letting you relinquish your cognitive control. Since our brain is evolutionarily programmed to exert as little effort as possible, it is constantly on the outlook to set such "cues" that allow it to revert to default behaviour, and hence save you from expending too much brainpower.
The next step in the loop is the actual action that gets triggered.
The final step is the reward - this, says The Power of Habit, is what tells the brain whether the action it just took should be repeatable or not. The higher the reward, the more likely your brain is to want to engage in that behaviour again.
The Power of Habit uses the example of brushing teeth in his book. Back in World War One, he says, bad dental hygiene was on the verge of becoming a national crisis. In those days, hardly anyone brushed their teeth. Toothpastes and brushes for hygiene were regarded as the proverbial snake-oil. However, after an ingenious marketing campaign by a man called Claude Hopkins, by the time World War Two rolled around, it was discovered that nearly half the men in the Army were brushing their teeth regularly!
Hopkins worked his magic by associating a behaviour with a cue, and a reward the with behaviour. In this case, he used the filmy coating that we can feel on our teeth as a "cue". The behaviour he encouraged people to do was brush their teeth using the toothpaste he was marketing (a brand called Pepsodent), and the reward they got for it was a minty freshness from the toothpaste.
The Power of Habit notes that the minty freshness that we now associate with a clean mouth was a relatively new phenomenon back then, and that it has no effect on actual oral hygiene. In fact, many leading dentists of the day disclaimed Pepsodent as a farce, because it so heavily advertised the feeling of freshness. However, Pepsodent succeeded where so many other toothpaste brands failed because it gave its buyers a tangible reward (minty freshness) as opposed to a promise of good oral hygiene.
So there you have it - that's the Habit loop. Cue, behaviour, reward. This sequence evolved into a habit when it's repeated enough times so that through classical conditioning the brain starts anticipating the reward as soon as it sees the cue. This elicits an automatic craving that can't be satisfied until the behaviour is performed.
Here's the an affiliate link The Power of Habit if you'd like to support my blog. And here's the non-affiliate link if you're not into that. :)
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| The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg |
First of all, habits are relatively simple things. It's when hundreds, even thousands of these coalesce around a single individual do they emerge as something as complex as the "lifestyle" of that individual.
Habits come from a three-step loop, says The Power of Habit. The first step of the loop is the "cue". This is what triggers the automatic behaviour, letting you relinquish your cognitive control. Since our brain is evolutionarily programmed to exert as little effort as possible, it is constantly on the outlook to set such "cues" that allow it to revert to default behaviour, and hence save you from expending too much brainpower.
The next step in the loop is the actual action that gets triggered.
The final step is the reward - this, says The Power of Habit, is what tells the brain whether the action it just took should be repeatable or not. The higher the reward, the more likely your brain is to want to engage in that behaviour again.
The Power of Habit uses the example of brushing teeth in his book. Back in World War One, he says, bad dental hygiene was on the verge of becoming a national crisis. In those days, hardly anyone brushed their teeth. Toothpastes and brushes for hygiene were regarded as the proverbial snake-oil. However, after an ingenious marketing campaign by a man called Claude Hopkins, by the time World War Two rolled around, it was discovered that nearly half the men in the Army were brushing their teeth regularly!
Hopkins worked his magic by associating a behaviour with a cue, and a reward the with behaviour. In this case, he used the filmy coating that we can feel on our teeth as a "cue". The behaviour he encouraged people to do was brush their teeth using the toothpaste he was marketing (a brand called Pepsodent), and the reward they got for it was a minty freshness from the toothpaste.
The Power of Habit notes that the minty freshness that we now associate with a clean mouth was a relatively new phenomenon back then, and that it has no effect on actual oral hygiene. In fact, many leading dentists of the day disclaimed Pepsodent as a farce, because it so heavily advertised the feeling of freshness. However, Pepsodent succeeded where so many other toothpaste brands failed because it gave its buyers a tangible reward (minty freshness) as opposed to a promise of good oral hygiene.
So there you have it - that's the Habit loop. Cue, behaviour, reward. This sequence evolved into a habit when it's repeated enough times so that through classical conditioning the brain starts anticipating the reward as soon as it sees the cue. This elicits an automatic craving that can't be satisfied until the behaviour is performed.
Here's the an affiliate link The Power of Habit if you'd like to support my blog. And here's the non-affiliate link if you're not into that. :)
 | ||
| The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg |
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