Habit drives most daily actions, research reveals

Habit, not conscious choice, drives most of our daily actions, according to new research from the University of Surrey, University of South Carolina and CQUniversity.

Health promotion education and behavior associate professor Amanda Rebar teamed up with researchers from CQUniversity and the University of Surrey to assess how many everyday human behaviors are driven by habit, with the findings published in Psychology & Health. 

They found that 66 per cent of these actions are, indeed, habitual – suggesting that making healthier lifestyle changes may be less about starting from scratch and more about swapping one habit for another.

“Many psychology models portray people as rational decision makers who carefully deliberate over the pros and cons of their options prior to choosing how to act,” says Assoc Prof Rebar, who studies motivation of health behaviors and how to make or break habits. 

“However, previous research has shown that one of the most reliable predictors of future behavior is past behavior. Further, much of this repetitive behavior is undertaken with minimal forethought and is instead generated by the automatic influence of habit.”

Intentional actions are slow and effortful, whereas relying on habits leads to smooth and efficient behavior that individuals can engage in through repetitive actions that require limited conscious awareness. But how much and to what extent do we lean on habits as we go through our daily lives?

To answer these questions, the researchers designed an ecological momentary assessment study to estimate the proportion of everyday behaviors that are actually habits. 

They also looked at alignment between intentions and habits, concepts that are frequently portrayed as oppositional but are often complementary – likely because habits are typically formed through the repetition of an intended behavior. 

For example, switching from cereal to overnight oats might have started as an effortful, intentional action each morning but soon becomes a habit through repetition. 

“Our study shows that two-thirds of what people do each day is sparked by habit, and the majority of the time those habits are intentional,” says Assoc Prof Grace Vincent, a sleep scientist at CQUniversity’s Appleton Institute and a co-author on the study. 

“This means that if we set out to create a positive habit, whether that’s around better sleep hygiene, or nutrition, or general wellbeing improvements, we can rely on an internal ‘autopilot’ to take over and help us maintain those habits."

“Unfortunately not all habits are created equal – exercise was the exception in our findings, which was often still triggered by habit, but less likely to be achieved by the participants ‘on autopilot’, compared to other behaviours.”

The team recruited 105 participants across Australia and the United Kingdom to complete six daily surveys on their moment-to-moment activities, over the course of a week. 

The behaviors the participants were engaged in at the time of each survey prompt varied widely, with the most common activities including employment, education, or volunteer duties (21.7 per cent), domestic or childcare activities (17.9 per cent), screen time (17.2 per cent), and eating or drinking (10.7 per cent). Exercise came in at only 5.9 per cent. 

After coding and scoring the survey responses, the authors found that most daily behaviors were habitually instigated, and 87.6 per cent of habits were habitually executed. 

The notable outlier was exercise, which was more likely to be habitually instigated but less likely to be habitually executed. They also discovered that 76.2 per cent of daily behaviors were intentional, providing evidence of significant overlap (46 per cent) between habits and intentions. 

"For people who want to break their bad habits, simply telling them to ‘try harder’ isn't enough,” adds Prof Benjamin Gardner, from the University of Surrey. 

“To create lasting change, we must incorporate strategies to help people recognize and disrupt their unwanted habits and ideally form positive new ones in their place." 

CQUniversity's Appleton Institute is a world-leading research organisation supporting health, wellbeing and safety of individuals, workplaces and communities. Learn more at the Appleton website.