Making health habitual: the psychology of 'habit-formation' and general practice.

doi:10.3399/bjgp12X659466

Paper

Making health habitual: the psychology of 'habit-formation' and general practice.

Published Dec 1, 2012 · B. Gardner, Phillippa Lally, J. Wardle

The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners

Q1 SJR score

422

Citations

14

Influential Citations

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Abstract

The Secretary of State recently proposed that the NHS: ‘... take every opportunity to prevent poor health and promote healthy living by making the most of healthcare professionals’ contact with individual patients.’ 1 Patients trust health professionals as a source of advice on ‘lifestyle’ (that is, behaviour) change, and brief opportunistic advice can be effective.2 However, many health professionals shy away from giving advice on modifying behaviour because they find traditional behaviour change strategies time-consuming to explain and difficult for the patient to implement.2 Furthermore, even when patients successfully initiate the recommended changes, the gains are often transient3 because few of the traditional behaviour change strategies have built-in mechanisms for maintenance. Brief advice is usually based on advising patients on what to change and why (for example, reducing saturated fat intake to reduce the risk of heart attack). Psychologically, such advice is designed to engage conscious deliberative motivational processes, which Kahneman terms ‘slow’ or ‘System 2’ processes.4 However, the effects are typically short-lived because motivation and attention wane. Brief advice on how to change, engaging automatic (‘System 1’) processes, may offer a valuable alternative with potential for long-term impact. Opportunistic health behaviour advice must be easy for health professionals to give and easy for patients to implement to fit into routine health care. We propose that simple advice on how to make healthy actions into habits — externally-triggered automatic responses to frequently encountered contexts — offers a useful option in the behaviour change toolkit. Advice for creating habits is easy for clinicians to deliver and easy for patients to implement: repeat a chosen behaviour in the same context, until it becomes automatic and effortless. While often used as a synonym for frequent or customary behaviour in everyday parlance, within psychology, ‘habits’ are defined as actions that …

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Study Snapshot

Making healthy actions into habits is an easy and effective way to promote long-term health improvements in patients.

PopulationOlder adults (50-71 years)

Sample size24

MethodsObservational

OutcomesBody Mass Index projections

ResultsSocial networks mitigate obesity in older groups.

Paper

Making health habitual: the psychology of 'habit-formation' and general practice.

References

Does intrinsic motivation strengthen physical activity habit? Modeling relationships between self-determination, past behaviour, and habit strength

Intrinsically motivated physical activity is more likely to be sustained and has a stronger habit strength, with self-determined regulation playing a direct and interdependent role.

Promoting habit formation

This review provides tools for intervention developers to promote habit formation and break unhealthy habits, focusing on initiating new behaviors, supporting context-dependent repetition, and enabling alternative responses to situational cues.

Study protocol for the 10 Top Tips (10TT) Trial: Randomised controlled trial of habit-based advice for weight control in general practice

The 10 Top Tips intervention, based on habit formation theory, could be a highly cost-effective and accessible tool for primary care patients seeking weight loss advice.

How do habits guide behavior? Perceived and actual triggers of habits in daily life

Strong habits are influenced by past performance contexts, but not current goals, while moderately strong habits are influenced by goals, with a U-shaped relationship between strength and actual goal influence.

Experiences of habit formation: A qualitative study

Habit formation in weight loss interventions becomes easier as automaticity increases, with habits typically formed in work-based contexts, and performance is reinstated when returning to work.

Citations