Habits as knowledge structures: Automaticity in goal-directed behavior.

Abstract

This study tested the idea of habits as a form of goal-directed automatic behavior. Expanding on the idea that habits are mentally represented as associations between goals and actions, it was proposed that goals are capable of activating the habitual action. More specific, when habits are established (e.g., frequent cycling to the university), the very activation of the goal to act (e.g., having to attend lectures at the university) automatically evokes the habitual response (e.g., bicycle). Indeed, it was tested and confirmed that, when behavior is habitual, behavioral responses are activated automatically. In addition, the results of 3 experiments indicated that (a) the automaticity in habits is conditional on the presence of an active goal (cf. goal-dependent automaticity; J. A. Bargh, 1989), supporting the idea that habits are mentally represented as goal-action links, and (b) the formation of implementation intentions (i.e., the creation of a strong mental link between a goal and action) may simulate goal-directed automaticity in habits.

Emotional transfer in goal systems

“…As cognitive entities, goals are assumed to be associatively linked to other cognitive entities, and in particular, to actions perceived as instrumental to their attainment, that is, to means assumed to lead to those particular goals (see also, Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2000Bargh & Chartrand, 1999;Bargh, Gollwitzer, LeeChai, Barndollar, & Troetschel, 2001;Moskowitz, Gollwitzer, Wasel, & Schaal, 1999). A high level goal may be connected to lower level sub-goals, in turn connected to their own attainment means as well as to other possible sub-goals.…”

Prospective memory tasks related to goals and concerns are rated as more important by both young and older adults

“…Given that goals can influence a person's intentions through automatic processes (e.g., Aarts and Dijksterhuis 2000;Sheeran et al 2005a), which show little to no decline with aging (e.g., Rogers 2000), a reasonable prediction would be that these effects should be similar for the two age groups. Therefore, our tentative prediction was that both young and older adults would rate their goal-related prospective memory tasks (and concern-related prospective memory tasks) as more important than other tasks.…”

Peripheral interaction: characteristics and considerations

“…Based on theory of divided attention and multitasking (as described in Sect. 2.1), actions may shift between periphery and center of attention as a result of various factors, such as difficulty [13] of the operation or habituation [14,15] of the activity. These factors may clearly differ from person to person: Habituation happens only if individuals gain experience in performing an activity, and certain activities may simply be more difficult for one person than for another.…”

“…The resource demand of activities depends on several factors such as the difficulty of the operation. Additionally, the automaticity [13] or habituation [14,15] of activities influences the amount of resources required: activities that have been trained extensively, such as walking, require only few mental resources. The division of resources over activities is furthermore influenced by the likelihood of activities being performed, which is managed by the supervisory attentional system [16].…”

“…Since interactions can shift to the periphery of attention when they are habituated [14,15], getting used to an interaction is needed before it can potentially become a peripheral interaction. In the FireFlies case study, we observed that some elements of the design could quickly be learned and potentially become habituated, while this required more time for other elements.…”