Neuroscience
Behaviours that are performed automatically, triggered by environmental prompts such as cookie jars and TV remotes, are known as habits, and one secret to becoming less sinful is to acquire healthier ones. This means repeatedly performing a desirable behaviour (e.g. going for a run) at the same time or in the same place, every week or every day. Well, that’s the theory. Surprisingly little research has actually been conducted on habit formation as it unfolds. Phillippa Lally at UCL’s Health Behaviour Unit bucked the trend last year when she and her colleagues asked 96 participants to keep a daily diary of their success at forming a new healthy habit. The main finding was that the average time it took for a new habit to reach peak automaticity was 66 days – far longer than previous estimates. The good news was that a single missed day had little long-term impact on successful habit formation, although repeated omissions did have a cumulative detrimental effect on the maximum automaticity that was reached. [further detail].
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This post is part of the Research Digest's Sin week. Each day for Seven days we'll be posting a confession, a new sin and a way to be good. The festivities coincide with the publication of a feature-length article on the psychology behind the Seven Deadly Sins in this month's Psychologist magazine.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Seven ways to be good: 1) Learn healthier habits
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This post is part of the Research Digest's Sin week. Each day for Seven days we'll be posting a confession, a new sin and a way to be good. The festivities coincide with the publication of a feature-length article on the psychology behind the Seven Deadly Sins in this month's Psychologist magazine.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- The Digest Guide To ... Willpower
10 years of the Research DigestThis is the sixth and last in a series of self-help posts drawing on the BPS Research Digest archive to mark its tenth anniversary. The previous posts covered studying, human attraction, happiness, influencing...
- Seven New Deadly Sins: 7) Insert Your Sin Here
Our panel of psychologists suggested Truthiness, Iphonophilia, Narcissistic Myopia, Entitlement, Mobile Abuse, and Excessive Debt as new Deadly Sins relevant to the 21st century. What do you think of these and what new sins do you propose? Celebrity worship?...
- Seven New Deadly Sins: 6) Excessive Debt
‘The financial crisis we're in originated partly because of people running up huge debts they couldn't pay,’ says Roy Baumeister of Florida State University. ‘Politicians and governments also spend beyond their means, creating debts that...
- Seven New Deadly Sins: 5) Mobile Abuse
Mobile abuse: ‘Shouting into your cell phone on the bus, or as the curtain is going up at the opera – that happened to me,’ says Helen Fisher at Rutgers University. ‘I mean where are these people coming from, where is their brain? It is extreme...
- Seven New Deadly Sins: 3) Narcissistic Myopia
Tim Kasser at Knox College, Illinois, says Narcissistic Myopia is the tendency to be short-sighted and self-centred, ‘taking whatever one wants now and forgetting that future generations of humans rely on the current generation to leave them a habitable...