A common explanation among avid coffee drinkers is that we drink coffee to wake ourselves up and alleviate fatigue.
That’s one question we set out to answer in our recent research. The answer has far-reaching implications for the way we approach major societal challenges such as diet and climate change.
But habit just doesn’t feel like a good explanation — it’s unsatisfying to say that we do something just because it’s what we’re used to doing. Instead, we concoct more compelling explanations, like saying we drink coffee to ease our morning fog.
Unpacking what lies behind habits
To test whether people underestimate the role that habit plays in their lives, we asked more than 100 coffee drinkers what they think drives their coffee consumption. They estimated that tiredness was about twice as important as habit in driving them to drink coffee. To benchmark these assumptions against reality, we then tracked these people’s coffee drinking and fatigue over the course of one week.
The results starkly diverged from our research participants’ explanations. Yes, they were somewhat more likely to drink coffee when tired — as would be expected — but we found that habit was an equally strong influence. In other words, people wildly overestimated the role of tiredness and underestimated the role of habit. Habits, it seems, aren’t considered much of an explanation.
We then replicated this finding in a second study with a behavior that people might consider a “bad” habit — failing to help in response to a stranger’s request. People still overlooked habit and assumed that their reluctance to proffer help was due to their mood at the time.
The gap between the actual and perceived role of habit in our lives matters. And this gap is key to understanding why people often struggle to change repeated behaviors. If you believe that you drink coffee because you are tired, then you might try to reduce coffee drinking by going to bed early. But ultimately you’d be barking up the wrong tree — your habit would still be there in the morning.
Why habits are surprisingly difficult to change
The reason that habits can be so difficult to overcome is that they are not fully under our control. Of course, most of us can control a single instance of a habit, such as by refusing a cup of coffee this time or taking the time to offer directions to a lost tourist. We exert willpower and just push through. But consistently reining in a habit is fiendishly difficult.
To illustrate, imagine you had to avoid saying words that contain the letter “I” for the next five seconds. Pretty simple, right? But now imagine if you had to maintain this rule for a week. We habitually use many words that contain “I.” Suddenly, the required 24/7 monitoring turns this simple task into a far more onerous one.
It’s not just willpower
If the answer isn’t willpower, then what is the key to controlling habits?
Effectively changing behavior starts with recognizing that a great deal of behavior is habitual. Habits keep us repeating unwanted behaviors but also desirable ones, even if just enjoying a good-tasting morning brew.
Asaf Mazar is a postdoctoral fellow in behavioral science at the University of Pennsylvania. Wendy Wood is provost professor emeritus of psychology and business at the University of Southern California’s Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Mazar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond an academic appointment. Wood receives research funding from the National Institute on Aging, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the University of Southern California provide funding as members of The Conversation US.