23 Oct Habits are often as much a curse as a benefit (CHARLES DUHIGG) | Part B’
Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly
looking for ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, the brain will
try to make almost any routine into a habit, because habits allow our
minds to ramp down more often. This effort-saving instinct is a huge
advantage. An efficient brain requires less room, which makes for a
smaller head, which makes childbirth easier and therefore causes
fewer infant and mother deaths. An efficient brain also allows us to
stop thinking constantly about basic behaviors, such as walking and
choosing what to eat, so we can devote mental energy to inventing
spears, irrigation systems, and, eventually, airplanes and video games.
But conserving mental effort is tricky, because if our brains power
down at the wrong moment, we might fail to notice something
important, such as a predator hiding in the bushes or a speeding car as
we pull onto the street. So our basal ganglia have devised a clever
system to determine when to let habits take over. It’s something that
happens whenever a chunk of behavior starts or ends.
To see how it works, look closely at the graph of the rat’s
neurological habit again. Notice that brain activity spikes at the
beginning of the maze, when the rat hears the click before the partition
starts moving, and again at the end, when it finds the chocolate.
Those spikes are the brain’s way of determining when to cede
control to a habit, and which habit to use. From behind a partition, for
instance, it’s difficult for a rat to know if it’s inside a familiar maze or
an unfamiliar cupboard with a cat lurking outside. To deal with this
uncertainty, the brain spends a lot of effort at the beginning of a habit
looking for something—a cue—that offers a hint as to which pattern to
use. From behind a partition, if a rat hears a click, it knows to use the
maze habit. If it hears a meow, it chooses a different pattern. And at
the end of the activity, when the reward appears, the brain shakes
itself awake and makes sure everything unfolded as expected.
This process within our brains is a three-step loop. First, there is a
cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and
which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or
mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your
brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the
future:
THE HABIT LOOP
Over time, this loop—cue, routine, reward; cue, routine, reward—
becomes more and more automatic. The cue and reward become
intertwined until a powerful sense of anticipation and craving
emerges. Eventually, whether in a chilly MIT laboratory or your
driveway, a habit is born.
●●●
Habits aren’t destiny. As the next two chapters explain, habits can be
ignored, changed, or replaced. But the reason the discovery of the
habit loop is so important is that it reveals a basic truth: When a habit
emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It
stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks. So unless you
deliberately fight a habit—unless you find new routines—the pattern
will unfold automatically.
However, simply understanding how habits work—learning the
structure of the habit loop—makes them easier to control. Once you
break a habit into its components, you can fiddle with the gears.
“We’ve done experiments where we trained rats to run down a maze
until it was a habit, and then we extinguished the habit by changing
the placement of the reward,” Ann Graybiel, a scientist at MIT who
oversaw many of the basal ganglia experiments, told me. “Then one
day, we’ll put the reward in the old place, and put in the rat, and, by
golly, the old habit will reemerge right away. Habits never really
disappear. They’re encoded into the structures of our brain, and that’s
a huge advantage for us, because it would be awful if we had to relearn
how to drive after every vacation. The problem is that your brain can’t
tell the difference between bad and good habits, and so if you have a
bad one, it’s always lurking there, waiting for the right cues and
rewards.”
This explains why it’s so hard to create exercise habits, for instance,
or change what we eat. Once we develop a routine of sitting on the
couch, rather than running, or snacking whenever we pass a doughnut
box, those patterns always remain inside our heads. By the same rule,
though, if we learn to create new neurological routines that overpower
those behaviors—if we take control of the habit loop—we can force
those bad tendencies into the background, just as Lisa Allen did after
her Cairo trip. And once someone creates a new pattern, studies have
demonstrated, going for a jog or ignoring the doughnuts becomes as
automatic as any other habit.
Without habit loops, our brains would shut down, overwhelmed by
the minutiae of daily life. People whose basal ganglia are damaged by
injury or disease often become mentally paralyzed. They have trouble
performing basic activities, such as opening a door or deciding what to
eat. They lose the ability to ignore insignificant details—one study, for
example, found that patients with basal ganglia injuries couldn’t
recognize facial expressions, including fear and disgust, because they
were perpetually uncertain about which part of the face to focus on.
Without our basal ganglia, we lose access to the hundreds of habits we
rely on every day. Did you pause this morning to decide whether to tie
your left or right shoe first? Did you have trouble figuring out if you
should brush your teeth before or after you showered?
Of course not. Those decisions are habitual, effortless. As long as
your basal ganglia is intact and the cues remain constant, the
behaviors will occur unthinkingly. (Though when you go on vacation,
you may get dressed in different ways or brush your teeth at a different
point in your morning routine without noticing it.)
At the same time, however, the brain’s dependence on automatic
routines can be dangerous. Habits are often as much a curse as a
benefit.
Part A’: https://www.lecturesbureau.gr/1/habits-are-often-as-much-a-curse-as-a-benefit-part-a-2730a/?lang=en
The power of habit
CHARLES DUHIGG
