Summary: Researchers warn that people often underestimate how much habit shapes everyday actions—such as drinking coffee. A habit is defined by the automatic triggering of behavior, separate from conscious intentions, and this automaticity can make habits less visible to the people who perform them.
Source: USC
Did you have a cup of coffee this morning? If so, was it driven by tiredness or simply by an automatic routine?
A study by researchers at the University of Southern California, published in Psychological Science, shows that people tend to underestimate the influence of habit on their behavior—coffee drinking included.
“People may drink coffee out of habit—for example, automatically following a coffee routine when they wake up or during their commute—regardless of how tired they actually feel,” said Asaf Mazar, a doctoral candidate in psychology at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
Mazar explained that what makes a behavior a habit is its automatic triggering, occurring independently of conscious intentions.
“Much of daily life is shaped by habits, yet people are often reluctant to acknowledge this and instead attribute their actions to mood or deliberate intent,” added Wendy Wood, USC Provost Professor of Psychology and Business and coauthor of the study.
To measure how people perceive habit versus deliberate motivation, Mazar and Wood asked participants to explain what drives their coffee drinking. Respondents reported that fatigue was roughly twice as influential as habit in prompting coffee consumption.
However, when researchers monitored participants over a week—recording both coffee intake and self-reported tiredness every two hours—the data showed that habit was at least as strong a predictor of coffee drinking as feelings of fatigue.
“Participants significantly overestimated the role of tiredness and underestimated the role of habit in their coffee drinking,” said Mazar.
Even when participants were offered financial incentives to accurately explain the reasons behind their coffee consumption, they continued to cite fatigue more often than habit.
Experimental evidence of habits shaping behavior
The researchers also ran an online experiment examining helping behavior. Participants first recalled a positive, negative, or neutral memory, then practiced pressing either a left- or right-hand key repeatedly. Finally, they were asked whether they wanted to complete additional trials to help the researchers.
Willingness to help was measured by whether participants pressed a highly practiced key or a less practiced one. Those who had extensively practiced the “no” response were more likely to decline the request than participants who had practiced “yes” and “no” equally.
Although many participants attributed their choice to mood, the experiment showed that habitual key-pressing strongly influenced their responses. “This provides causal evidence that people prefer agentic explanations—appealing to inner states—over acknowledging habits, even when habit drives the behavior,” Wood said.
Why recognizing habits matters for behavior change
The authors argue that this gap between perceived and actual drivers of behavior helps explain why people struggle to change repeated actions like exercise, diet, or other health-related routines. When asked what prevents lifestyle change, many Americans cite a lack of willpower, reflecting a cultural emphasis on deliberate control rather than on the automatic forces of habit.
“To change behavior effectively, people must accept that much of what they do is habitual and automatic,” Mazar said. “Habits can perpetuate unwanted actions, but they can also sustain beneficial routines, such as regular exercise or recycling.”
Wood and Mazar highlighted climate action as an example where motivation is often high but repeated sustainable behaviors are hard to maintain. Successful adopters of recycling, they found, had developed simple habit-supporting strategies: placing recycling bins where they are used, labeling containers clearly, and creating small, repeatable cues that make the desired behavior easy and rewarding.
“It may sound straightforward,” Wood observed, “but the difference between knowing and doing often comes down to the habits people build.”
About this behavioral neuroscience research news
Author: Jenesse Miller
Source: USC
Contact: Jenesse Miller – USC
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Closed access.
“Illusory Feelings, Elusive Habits: People Overlook Habits in Explanations of Behavior” by Asaf Mazar et al., Psychological Science
Abstract
Illusory Feelings, Elusive Habits: People Overlook Habits in Explanations of Behavior
Habits underlie much of human behavior, yet people often favor explanations that emphasize internal states—such as mood or intention—over habitual processes. To test this misattribution, researchers conducted an online experiment of helping behavior (N = 809 adults) and an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) of U.S. college students’ coffee drinking (N = 112).
Both studies revealed a consistent pattern: habit strength equaled or outperformed inner states in predicting behavior, while participants’ explanations emphasized inner states. This misperception persisted even when participants were financially incentivized to be accurate and when they explained others’ actions.
The authors discuss how underestimating the role of habits may undermine self-regulation and make it harder to establish and maintain beneficial routines.