The goal-dependent automaticity of drinking habits.
In recent treatments of habitual social behaviour, habits are conceptualized as a form of goal-directed automatic behaviour that are mentally represented as goal-action links. Three experiments tested this conceptualization in the context of students' drinking (alcohol consumption)habits. Participants were randomly assigned to conditions where either a goal related to drinking behaviour (socializing) was activated, or an unrelated goal was activated. In addition, participants' drinking habits were measured. The dependent variable in Experiments 1 and 2 was readiness to drink, operationalized by speed of responding to the action concept 'drinking' in a verb verification task. Experiment 3 used the uptake of a voucher to measure drinking behaviour. Findings supported the view that when habits are established, simply activating a goal related to the focal behaviour automatically elicits that behaviour. These findings are consistent with a goal-dependent conception of habit. Possibilities for interventions designed to attenuate undesirable habitual behaviours are considered.
Sheeran
Paschal
P
Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK. p.sheeran@sheffield.ac.uk
Aarts
Henk
H
Custers
Ruud
R
Rivis
Amanda
A
Webb
Thomas L
TL
Cooke
Richard
R
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000523:psychology*; D000435:Alcoholic Intoxication / Q000523:psychology; D001332:Automatism / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006040:Goals; D006184:Habits; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D011930:Reaction Time; D012919:Social Behavior; D012931:Social Environment; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires