Why we do what we do and how to change

The Power of Habit

By Charles Duhigg

“Each chapter revolves around a central argument: Habits can be changed, if we understand how they work…At one point, we all consciously decided how much to eat and what to focus on when we got to the office, how often to have a drink or when to go for a job. Then we stopped making a choice, and the behaviour became automatic. It’s a natural consequence of our neurology. And by understanding how it happens, you can rebuild those patterns in whichever way you choose.”

Basal Ganglia

The Basal Ganglia is an oval of cells which Scientists did not understand for years but had a hunch that it was somewhat involves in the decision making process.

In the early 1990’s a team of MIT scientists began a research project in which they took mice and inserted monitors into their brains. The mice were then placed into a T-Shaped Max with Chocolate in one corner. The door would click open. Initially when a mouse heard the click it would wander up and down the aisle. When it reached the end of the T it would often turn right and would then hopefully turn and discover the chocolate.

At first there were bursts of brain activity when the mouse was exploring its environment. However, over time when the mouse got used to the T it’s brain activity would decrease.

“It was as if the first few times a rat explored the maze, its brain had to work at full power to make sense of all the new information. But after a few days of running the same route, the rat didn’t need to scratch the walls or smell the air anymore….that interlization relied upon the basal ganglia…this tiny, ancient neurological structure seemed to take over as the rat ran faster and its brain worked less and less. The basal ganglia was central to recalling patterns and acting on them. The basal ganglia, in other words, stored habits even whole the rest of the brain went to sleep.”

This energy conserving function is really useful and our brain has developed to know when to pay attention and when to fall back on habits. This process ia three-step loop.

• Cue — A trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and what habits to use.
• Routine — Physical, mental or emotional.
• Reward — Helps your brain know if this habit is worth keeping.

Those who have hurt their basal ganglia find it hard to perform basic activities as they can’t fall back on pre-learnt habits with their brain constantly working. As habits allow the brain to work less it is hard to over-ride them.

Craving

A monkey was placed in an experiment in which it would sit at a screen. When a certain shape showed on the screen the monkey would be given some juice through a straw. Once this habit was formed the experimenter stopped the juice being given, delayed it or diluted it. This break from habit would illicit an angry response with this habit becoming a craving.

Researchers then tried to distract the monkeys by offering food or the opportunity to go outside. The monkeys who had developed a habit were so overwhelmed by their sense of craving that they wouldn’t move!

Studies around habits have found that a cue and reward are not enough. One must start craving the reward for habits to set in.

In 2007 Mueller, a German neurologist, and his colleagues at the University of Magdeburg implanted small electrical devices inside the brains of five alcoholics who had repeatedly tried to give up booze. The device implanted was inside their basal ganglia and emitted an electrical charge which interrupted cravings. The patients were then exposed to cues that trigger alcoholic urges such as trips to a bar. The subjects didn’t touch a drop.

The Golden Rule of Habits

The Golden Rule of Habit Change says that the most effective way to shift a habit is to diagnose and retain the old cue and reward, and try to change only the routine.

The Story of Alcoa

O’Neill was a master of lists. After decades in the public sector, O’Neill was tagged to become the CEO Alcoa (the world’s largest pulp and paper company), a company plagued with staff strikes and turmoil.

O’Neill told the unions that he would negotiate them on any topic but safety. He would never negotiate on safety and wanted Alcoa to be the world standard for industrial safety. To become the safest, you had to have the most efficient and streamlined industrial process in the world.

O’Neill put a habit loop in place. Cue — an injury, Routine — Whenever there was an accident it was reported to O’Neill within twenty-four hours and processes were put in place to prevent it from re-occurring & Reward — those would embraced the system were promoted.

Willpower is a muscle

Participants were divided into two groups and placed into a room with a plate of radishes and plate of hot cookies.

• Group 1 —Were told to ignore the cookies and eat the radishes.
• Group 2 — Were told to ignore the radishes and eat the cookies.

The aim of the experiment was to test the willpower of Group 1 as they had to exert willpower to not eat the hot cookies.

After five minutes, the researchers returned and told the students that they needed to wait 15 minutes for the “sensory memory of the food to fade”. In the meantime they were given a maze puzzle to solve and asked to complete the puzzle. If you want to quit just ring the bell. The puzzle was impossible to solve and therefore tested willpower. Did the two groups differ?

The cookie eaters worked for an average of 19 minutes on the puzzle before quitting. The radish eaters worked an average of 9 minutes.

“By making people use a little bit of their willpower to ignore cookies, we had put them into a state where they were willing to quite much faster.” Muraven told me. “There’s been more than two hundred studies on this idea since the, and they’ve al found the same thing. Willpower isn’t just a skill. It’s a muscle, like the muscles in your arms or legs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s less power left over for other thing.”

Hey Ya!

By every metric Hey Ya! was going to be a monster hit. On September 4, 2003 WIOQ Radio Station began to play the song. At the time this Radio station was able to determine when people tuned out of the station. According to their data, people hated Hey Ya! with listeners quickly tuning out. The verdict wast that Hey Ya! didn’t sound anything like what people expected. Radio listeners didn’t want to make a conscious decision each time they were presented with a new song; instead they wanted to rely on old habits with the song sounding familiar.

Radio executives were desperate for Hey Ya! to be the hit they knew it could be. The song was camouflaged by sandwiching it between two conventional hits to ease the user into the song.