The Power of Habit

I seem to be reading a number of pop psychology books. I’m not sure what this means, but I can see why they are appealing to the masses. They have catchy titles and hint at self-improvement. Molecular-level chemistry on the other hand is less interesting to most people. A frequent response from someone new that I meet, when he or she learns that I am a chemist runs along the lines of “that was my worst subject in school”. Why does chemistry conjure these feelings? I’m not going to dwell on that question in today’s post. Rather I have three short vignettes on Charles Duhigg’s new book The Power of Habit. It has the catchy subtitle “why we do what we do in life and business”, and the appendix features a “reader’s guide to using these ideas”.

The thrust of the book is to look at how habits are ingrained and how they can potentially be changed. The main idea is to understand the “habit loop” consisting of three parts: Cue, Routine, Reward. The trick is self-understanding what the Cue and Reward are. Then one needs to figure out how to change the Routine in the loop by redirecting it. Various psychology experiments are described throughout the book, but the interviews with different people and looking back at events in history are the most interesting parts.

One vignette involves the initial failure of Febreze, a Procter & Gamble product that stumped a top-notch advertising team that had seen many successes in the past. It involves an accidental discovery by a chemist and smoker whose wife thought he had quit smoking, a crazy cat lady, a park ranger whose life constantly smelled of skunk, and many videotapes of people cleaning their homes. The trick turned out to be marketing the product as a mini-celebration of a final touch to the dreary cleaning process to give it that “fresh scent” rather than the its odor-removing capabilities (which were important but simply didn’t market well).

The interviews with recovering alcoholics in AA highlighted the importance of belief and the power of community in habit change. Both were key aspects to changed habits and lives. A related story highlights Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat leading to her arrest, which was then followed by a Montgomery bus boycott, which then turned into a revolution led by Martin Luther King Jr. and others. But it wasn’t just close friends and family that led to the powerful movement, but rather what the author terms “weak ties”. Without these, things simply stay within a small community and momentum eventually flags. A related study showed that in landing a job, such “weak-tie acquaintances were often more important that strong-tie friends because weak ties give access to social networks where we won’t otherwise belong.” This made me think about molecular interactions in chemistry where weak forces (such as hydrogen bonds or dipole interactions) are what control much of the interesting associations and dissociations in macromolecular systems. That’s where all the interesting action is! (The very strong bonds don’t lead to large scale interesting systems-level interactions. It’s the weak forces!)

The final chapter is titled “The Neurology of Free Will”. It juxtaposes a sleepwalker who committed a murder (who was otherwise non-violent) and someone who became addicted to gambling. The courts acquitted the sleepwalker but did not rule in favor of the addict who was plied with gifts by the casino to encourage the forming of a strong compulsive habit. One interesting MRI study suggested that for gamblers, “near misses” or “almost winning” lit up the same area of the brain as winning, while for non-gamblers they counted as losses. More insidiously, “slot machines [and scratch cards were] reprogrammed to deliver a more constant supply of near wins.” Scary thought.

Duhigg never answers the question as to whether we are just a “bundle of habits”. He does assume that humans have free will to believe in the possibility of change (as hard as it might be) and the capability to effect such change if surrounded by an appropriate community of support. Bad habits are hard to break. Good habits are easy to keep. It’s made me wonder about the study habits of my students and what I can do to help them establish good habits from the get-go. I will have a new class of first-year advisees in the Fall, and there is the opportunity during this time of upheaval for new habits to be established. But first, I should try to help my current students end the semester well. (Stress levels are high among students with two weeks of class to go.)