BLACK & GOLD QUARTERLY (BGQ) May. 2019

Breaking Bad

Habits

by LIA COOK Staff Writer

Exploring the science behind forming— and breaking— bad habits.

Everyone has bad habits, whether we like to admit them or not. I’m personally guilty of staying up way too late or biting my nails when I get nervous. Little things such as spending too much time watching TV may not seem like a big deal, but often times bad habits can have a surprising and significant impact on a person’s life.

Breaking a bad habit is no easy task, but many scientists and psychologists have proposed many solutions. The first step is to identify and be conscious of the habit, such as why you perform that habit and when. What are the triggers? Next, you have to actually override that bad habit by making a new habit (i.e. instead of reaching for the cookie jar for a snack, go to the fridge for some fruit instead.) Other ways that can help eliminate the bad habit are to try and cut out

Habit, Duhigg writes, “without habits, our brains would shut down, overwhelmed by the minutiae of everyday life.” Christina Gremel, assistant professor of psychology at the University of California San Diego, clarifies in her article, “How the Brain Makes- and Breaks- a Habit” from the US San Diego News Center, that “we need to be able to make routine actions quickly and efficiently, and habits serve this purpose.” In other words, habitmaking is the brain’s way of trying to make life easier for us.

It is a simple truth that forming a bad habit is a generally a lot easier than breaking one; when someone performs a habit over and over again, a pattern called a “habit loop” is established. Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer-prize winning reporter for the New York Times and author of two different books exploring the science of habit formation and productivity, states that a habit loop is a three-part process. On a recent edition of the NPR program Fresh

Air, Duhigg explained, “First, there’s a cue, or trigger, that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and let a behavior unfold.” The second step, the “routine,” is the actual behavior. The last component of the process is the “reward: something that your brain likes that helps it remember the ‘habit loop’ in the future.” Using my own bad habit as an example, whenever I was stressed or anxious: the trigger. I started to bite my nails: the behavior. As a result, I would feel less stressed and anxious: the reward.

Over time, habits become automatic behaviors, meaning we perform them subconsciously, just like brushing your teeth, checking your smartphone for emails, texts, or social media content first thing in the morning, or driving a particular route; the more a habit is performed, the more the action is reinforced in the neural pathways of

Although it might be argued that habits could make our lives easier, bad habits can have a negative effect on our mental and physical health or wellbeing. “I go to bed too late,” Alana Vang ‘19 admits. “Going to bed really late leaves me feeling drained the next day.” Alaina McGinnis ‘19 acknowledges that procrastinating is one of her main bad habits. “I don’t always get my work done on time,” she says. The effect of a bad habit can seep into other aspects of a person’s life and may have severe or detrimental consequences. Examples of more serious habits include smoking, vaping, drug usage, and alcoholism. But even small habits, like nail biting, can impact one’s health; the hand and nail area often carry many germs, and when put in the mouth, can lead to illnesses. When I used to bite my nails, I would get very self-conscious about the appearance of my nails, and would purposefully wear long sleeves to hide my hands, yet no matter how much I disliked how my nails looked, I couldn’t stop biting them. Many people would tell me, “just don’t bite them,” which isn’t as simple as

Psycho-Cybernetics in 1960, proposed that it takes a minimum of twenty-one days to break a bad habit. However, in 2009, researchers from the University College London conducted a study on ninety-six participants over the course of twelve weeks and concluded that the time to break and form a new habit ranged from eighteen to 256 days, and, in the experiment, they observed that even when “participants were motivated to create habits, approximately half did not perform the behaviour consistently enough to achieve habit status.” The 2009 study, “How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world,” is published on the scientific database Wiley Online Library.

Unfortunately, there’s no quick and easy hack to break a bad habit; breaking a long term habit takes time and effort. Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon who published a book called

it seems. I had been biting my nails for years and tried many different methods to break my habit. The only solution that seemed to work was painting my nails regularly and carrying around stress toys to fiddle with. Although it wasn’t foolproof, I eventually grew out of my habit.