Habit
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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I've got a bad, bad habit, baby. --"Bad Habits" (1985) |
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A habit (or wont as a humorous and formal term) is a routine of behavior that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously.
The American Journal of Psychology (1903) defines a "habit, from the standpoint of psychology, [as] a more or less fixed way of thinking, willing, or feeling acquired through previous repetition of a mental experience." Habitual behavior often goes unnoticed in persons exhibiting it, because a person does not need to engage in self-analysis when undertaking routine tasks. Habits are sometimes compulsory. A 2002 daily experience study by habit researcher Wendy Wood and her colleagues found that approximately 43% of daily behaviors are performed out of habit. New behaviours can become automatic through the process of habit formation. Old habits are hard to break and new habits are hard to form because the behavioural patterns which humans repeat become imprinted in neural pathways, but it is possible to form new habits through repetition.
A 2007 study by Wood and Neal found that when behaviors are repeated in a consistent context, there is an incremental increase in the link between the context and the action. This increases the automaticity of the behavior in that context.
- efficiency
- lack of awareness
- unintentionality
- uncontrollability
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See also
- Behavioral addiction
- Fixation (psychology)
- Habitus (disambiguation)
- Self control
- Tetris effect
- Vice
- Perseverance (virtue)
- Habit modification approaches
- Behaviors with habitual elements
- Childhood obesity
- Nail-biting
- Neurodermatitis
- Nose-picking
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder
- Procrastination
- Thumb sucking
- Bulimia
See also
Habit or Habits may refer to:
- Habit (psychology), an acquired pattern of behavior that often occurs automatically
- Drug addiction is sometimes referred to as "having a drug habit".
- Habituation, non-associative learning in which there is a progressive diminution of behavioral response probability with repetition of a stimulus
- Religious habit, a distinctive dress worn by the members of a religious order
- Habit (biology), the instinctive actions of animals and the natural tendencies or growth form of plants
- Habit evidence, a term used in the law of evidence
Etymology
From Middle English, from Old French habit, from Latin habitus (“condition, bearing, state, appearance, dress, attire”), from habeō (“I have, hold, keep”); see have.
See also
