{"id":1322,"date":"2023-03-31T17:38:46","date_gmt":"2023-03-31T17:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/content.one.lumenlearning.com\/introductiontopsychology\/chapter\/16-5-3-learn-it-breaking-bad-habits\/"},"modified":"2023-09-28T14:47:11","modified_gmt":"2023-09-28T14:47:11","slug":"16-5-3-learn-it-breaking-bad-habits","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/content.one.lumenlearning.com\/introductiontopsychology\/chapter\/16-5-3-learn-it-breaking-bad-habits\/","title":{"raw":"Healthy Habits: Learn It 3\u2014Breaking Bad Habits","rendered":"Healthy Habits: Learn It 3\u2014Breaking Bad Habits"},"content":{"raw":"

Breaking Bad Habits<\/h2>\r\n

The experimenters weren\u2019t quite done. They had demonstrated that a habit cued by the right context can lead to behaviors that no one would consciously choose: like eating bad popcorn. However, they also wanted to know if interfering with the situation could reduce the power of the habit.<\/p>\r\n

In a second study, the experimenters went back to the cinema. There was no meeting room condition. This time they wanted the cinema to trigger the popcorn habit, but they asked if changing some essential part of the habitual behavior would reduce its power.<\/p>\r\n

Which hand do you use to hold the box of popcorn? Which hand do you use to grab a kernel or two and bring to your mouth? Many people report being very particular, saying they always hold the popcorn with the left hand and eat with the right, with no exceptions.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

For this study, the experimenters put a handle on the popcorn box and instructed half of the subjects to hold the box with their usual hand, and the other half to hold it with the other hand\u2014the one they usually don\u2019t use.[footnote]Reports collected after the experiment indicated that most participants followed these instructions almost all of the time, and no one violated the instructions very often. Happily, most college students are willing to cooperate with researchers.[\/footnote]<\/p>\r\n

The theory here is simple: If we change something about the habit, then we reduce its power. In turn, we become more aware of what we are doing\u2014more guided by our conscious goals and less by our automatic sequences of behavior. Is that what happened?<\/p>\r\n

Results<\/h3>\r\n

As with the first study, the experimenters divided the subjects into those with weak, medium, and strong movie-popcorn habits. The participants ate less popcorn in this experiment than in the first one,[footnote]This difference in average consumption is not discussed in the research article, and it might be nice to know why popcorn consumption was down in the second study. Nevertheless, the more important results was the difference between stale and fresh popcorn consumption in the three habit levels.[\/footnote] but the pattern of results was still interesting. Here is what happened when participants used their usual hands for holding the box and eating.<\/p>\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_5070\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"418\"]\"Figure<\/a> Figure 5<\/strong>. Those who used their typical hand when eating popcorn in the cinema condition were more likely to eat popcorn if they had strong popcorn-eating habits.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n

Notice that these results are very similar to the results of the first experiment, except that habit strength had a stronger influence on amount of popcorn consumed. Most importantly, at low habit strength, students ate less stale popcorn than fresh. At stronger habit strengths, the quality of the popcorn didn\u2019t matter. They just ate a lot of it.<\/p>\r\n

But what happens in the cinema, with all of its cues for eating popcorn, when an important part of the habit is altered? Make your prediction by moving the bars in the figure below. Remember that the opposite hand condition is supposed to reduce the power of the habit. It just doesn\u2019t feel the same.