Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast today.
Speaker 1: It's great to have Wendy would on the podcast. Wendy
Speaker 1: is Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at the University
Speaker 1: of Southern California. She has written for The Washington Post
Speaker 1: and the Los Angeles Times, and her work has been
Speaker 1: featured in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Time Magazine,
Speaker 1: and USA Today and on MPR. See lectures widely, and
Speaker 1: recently launched the website Good Habits, Bad Habits to convey
Speaker 1: scientific insight on habits to the general public. Her latest
Speaker 1: book is called Good Habits, Bad Habits, The Science of
Speaker 1: making positive Changes that stick. So great to chat with
Speaker 1: you today, Wendy. Oh, it's great to be here. Thank
Speaker 1: you for inviting me. My pleasure. So you're a world's
Speaker 1: leading expert on the science of habit change. But actually
Speaker 1: my introduction to your research was not through that topic.
Speaker 1: It was because I'm such a big fan of your
Speaker 1: work on gender differences. Oh, thank you. Well, that's nice
Speaker 1: of you to say that. Yes, I also study gender,
Speaker 1: but my current focus is mostly on habits. Great. I
Speaker 1: got really inted in studying how people stick to the
Speaker 1: changes that they make in their lives. What can we
Speaker 1: do to make those things that we really want to
Speaker 1: do persist? That has captured my focus for the past
Speaker 1: few years. In fact, I've been studying it for thirty
Speaker 1: years at this point. Yes, So was the gender differences
Speaker 1: thing kind of like a side hobby, Yeah, the extent
Speaker 1: that scientists have obvious? Yes, right, good point. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're going to obviously if we're going to focus
Speaker 1: on have a change today and I was reading the
Speaker 1: press materials for your book and said, you know, we
Speaker 1: think we know how good and bad habits are formed,
Speaker 1: but we have it completely wrong. Now is that a
Speaker 1: marketing ploy or do you think that's right? That we
Speaker 1: have it completely wrong? And who's we? What do I
Speaker 1: have wrong? We, as all of us. Habits are part
Speaker 1: of the unconscious, so we can't introspect about them. We
Speaker 1: don't have intuitions about them in the same way that
Speaker 1: we do other parts of our behavior, like when we
Speaker 1: make decisions to do something or have strong feelings about
Speaker 1: something in particular, those are conscious experiences that we have,
Speaker 1: and we recognize habits are something very different. They're part
Speaker 1: of the unconscious and they learn in different ways than
Speaker 1: our more conscious thinking selves. So as our conscious thinking
Speaker 1: selves always the better one of the angel devil, can
Speaker 1: our consciousness be the devil sometimes and our unconscious be
Speaker 1: what we want to happen. Yes, that's actually a pretty
Speaker 1: common misunderstanding about habits, and that's because I think our
Speaker 1: bad habits are just much more salient than our good ones.
Speaker 1: So we think about habits as things we don't want
Speaker 1: to do, but in fact, so many of our habits
Speaker 1: actually help us do things. Like when you drive, a
Speaker 1: lot of the time, you're not making active decisions, you're
Speaker 1: just doing what's worked in the past, which you've learned
Speaker 1: to do through repetition. And that's a great example of
Speaker 1: a habit because it's something that we do a lot,
Speaker 1: and we do without thinking, and we have bad habits
Speaker 1: and obviously we have good habits. Now point here, I
Speaker 1: guess is to get as many of these good habits
Speaker 1: as I can get going, so I don't have to
Speaker 1: think about it consciously. Is that right? Exactly? Because habits
Speaker 1: persist much more readily than our conscious decisions. You know,
Speaker 1: we've all had the experience of New Year's resolutions, where
Speaker 1: we are determined we're going to change our life around
Speaker 1: and do something different, maybe save more money, maybe we're
Speaker 1: harder at our jobs, maybe exercise, and we might do
Speaker 1: it for a few weeks, but then after a while
Speaker 1: it starts seeming less fun and less important, and so
Speaker 1: most of us quit. It's the failed New Year's resolution experience.
Speaker 1: And that's in part because we're relying on our conscious
Speaker 1: decisions and will power to do it, which is what
Speaker 1: makes sense to most of us. How we think that
Speaker 1: we act and behave and get our behavior in line
Speaker 1: with our goals. But in fact, the way people who
Speaker 1: are successful at these things are doing it is they
Speaker 1: do it automatically. So they've figured out how to sync
Speaker 1: up their habits, that automatic part of them selves that
Speaker 1: repeats what they've done in the past. They've figured out
Speaker 1: how to sync that up with their conscious decision making selves.
Speaker 1: I say, so they're integrated, yes, exactly. And all of
Speaker 1: this happens because we have multiple parts of our brain.
Speaker 1: Our brain isn't like this unified whole. We have parts
Speaker 1: that are specialized for different functions, and part of our
Speaker 1: brains pick up on the repeated patterns that get us
Speaker 1: rewards in everyday life, and part of our brains, typically
Speaker 1: thought of as executive control or associated with the frontal lobes,
Speaker 1: is associated with making decisions and exerting willpower. And those
Speaker 1: two parts aren't always in aren't always compatible. They're not
Speaker 1: always doing the same thing, that's for sure, and that's
Speaker 1: when we have bad habits. So how do you define
Speaker 1: a bad habit question? Habits are only good or bad
Speaker 1: in relation to our current goals. So things that we
Speaker 1: start doing because it seems like they're fun or they
Speaker 1: work for us in some way can become habits that
Speaker 1: then turn out to be problems. Like staying up late
Speaker 1: a few nights to watch Netflix or to play video
Speaker 1: games or to surf the web. You do that often
Speaker 1: enough and it becomes a how and you're developing a
Speaker 1: pattern of insomnia. So the first few times to do it.
Speaker 1: It could be fun, it could be fine. It's just
Speaker 1: when it becomes a repeated pattern that it's a problem
Speaker 1: and that's a bad habit. So don't we have all
Speaker 1: sorts of bad habits that we're doing all throughout the
Speaker 1: day that become these kind of habitual things like checking
Speaker 1: email and checking all sorts of playing on our iPhones
Speaker 1: and things like that. If we step back sometimes we
Speaker 1: might realize, holy cow, I've really been caught up in
Speaker 1: these bad habits. Yeah, we supposedly all check our cell
Speaker 1: phones over fifty times a day, and it's hard to
Speaker 1: imagine that most of us need to be doing that.
Speaker 1: I think we do it when we're bored. We check
Speaker 1: our cell phones when we're in social situations we don't
Speaker 1: want to be in. Maybe get in the elevator. There's
Speaker 1: people that you don't really want to talk to, so
Speaker 1: you check your cell phone. We use it. It's cute
Speaker 1: by all kinds of different experiences in our life, and
Speaker 1: so we tend to overuse it. That's an interesting idea
Speaker 1: of overusing it. And there's no thing is objectively bad habits.
Speaker 1: And you said it's relative to your goals, and but
Speaker 1: you know, we have so many goals that are always
Speaker 1: competing within ourselves. You know, we're cybernetic systems with so
Speaker 1: many conflicting goals. How do you know which are going
Speaker 1: to bring out the best version of your whole self?
Speaker 1: That's another good question, Thanks, Wendy. Would I think that
Speaker 1: the question of what goals to use to develop new
Speaker 1: habits has to do with what behaviors you want to
Speaker 1: repeat on a regular basis. I see the behaviors like
Speaker 1: eating healthfully, saving money, particularly as we all get closer
Speaker 1: to retirement, eating healthfully, going to the gym, and being
Speaker 1: responsive to our children and being there to listen to them.
Speaker 1: Those are all goals that we endorse pretty much every day,
Speaker 1: and it would be wonderful to not have to think
Speaker 1: about doing those things, but just do them automatically. And
Speaker 1: that's what the regular exercisers, the people with happy families,
Speaker 1: the people who are saving money effectively and living within
Speaker 1: their means, that's what they do. And that's the fascinating
Speaker 1: thing is until recently, we thought that self control was
Speaker 1: required in order to not respond to temptations to exert
Speaker 1: self denial, make sure that you are living a healthy,
Speaker 1: financially stable life. But instead it turned out that the
Speaker 1: people who are doing these things on a regular basis
Speaker 1: are doing it automatically out of habit. And that's why
Speaker 1: I wrote this book is I wanted to explain to
Speaker 1: people how they can do this too. Most of us
Speaker 1: don't know really a whole lot about our habits. I
Speaker 1: know there are lots of books out there. I know
Speaker 1: that there's lots of blogs and other sorts of posts
Speaker 1: about habits. And when I've done surveys and I've asked people, so,
Speaker 1: how much do you know about your habits? And about
Speaker 1: eighty percent of people in my surveys say I understand
Speaker 1: my habits, I know how they work. But then you
Speaker 1: ask them, so how successful are you at changing your
Speaker 1: behavior and making it stick? And those same people say
Speaker 1: not so great. So whatever we know about habits, it's
Speaker 1: not helping us. I think the science really can What
Speaker 1: do you think of James Clear's new book. I don't
Speaker 1: comment on other people's other people's work. I will say
Speaker 1: that there's an absence of books out there that actually
Speaker 1: are informed by the science that can tell us something true.
Speaker 1: For most of us, there's lots of books out there
Speaker 1: that tell us what works for the writer, or what
Speaker 1: the writer thinks might work for us, but there's little
Speaker 1: hard data on what actually works. That's what I think
Speaker 1: is the difference between my book and the other books
Speaker 1: out there. Got it? Because there is thirty years of
Speaker 1: hard data. You're just not distilled in a way that
Speaker 1: people can take into part of their lives so easily. Exactly,
Speaker 1: So you have this idea of friction and stacking. Could
Speaker 1: you please go into a little bit of detail about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So form a new habit is you have to repeat
Speaker 1: a behavior. It's not enough to make a decision. You
Speaker 1: can't just decide, Oh, I usually eat cookies on the
Speaker 1: sofa at night, and I'm going to change that. I'm
Speaker 1: going to do something else. I'm going to do jumping
Speaker 1: jacks instead or push ups when I would normally eat cookies.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work that way. You develop a habit as
Speaker 1: you repeat the action. So your habit memory depends upon
Speaker 1: what you have done in the past, not your decision making.
Speaker 1: You want to repeat the behavior in a supportive context.
Speaker 1: That's going to make it easy for you to keep
Speaker 1: doing the same thing over and over, and you want
Speaker 1: to make sure that it's rewarding, because people simply don't
Speaker 1: repeat things if they don't like them. So if you
Speaker 1: really hate exercising at the gym and you want to
Speaker 1: increase your fitness, then finding something else to do is
Speaker 1: what's going to be most helpful or add some reward
Speaker 1: to going to the gym. So for me, I find
Speaker 1: working out on the elliptical really boring, but I watch
Speaker 1: stupid TV shows when I do it, and there's no
Speaker 1: other time of the day do I do that. So
Speaker 1: working out on the elliptical has actually become a lot
Speaker 1: of fun for me. And that's what people need to
Speaker 1: do in order to get a behavior that might not
Speaker 1: others wise be rewarding something that they actually enjoy. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: Friction is the part of the context that makes it
Speaker 1: more difficult to do something. So we don't realize how
Speaker 1: much in fluence context has in our lives. And context
Speaker 1: is just everything around us. It's the situations we're in,
Speaker 1: it's the time of day, it's the other people around us. Proximity,
Speaker 1: how close things are to you, is an important feature
Speaker 1: of contexts, and that can be real friction. Let me
Speaker 1: give you an example. A study tracked cell phones. Our
Speaker 1: cell phone used is being monitored all the time. You
Speaker 1: probably know this. A study tracked cell phones how far
Speaker 1: they went to the gym. This is hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of cell phones over several months, how far they traveled
Speaker 1: to a paid fitness center. What they found is that
Speaker 1: if people traveled three and a half miles, they went
Speaker 1: five times a month on average, But if people traveled
Speaker 1: over five miles, they only went once a month on average.
Speaker 1: And what this suggests is that, I mean, first off,
Speaker 1: that difference of a mile and a half it doesn't
Speaker 1: make much sense to our rational thinking conscious self. Right,
Speaker 1: if you want to go to the gym, you're going
Speaker 1: to go to the gym, and it doesn't matter how
Speaker 1: far away it is. But it makes it more difficult,
Speaker 1: takes a bit more time, you have to think more
Speaker 1: about how to get there. All of that adds friction
Speaker 1: to going to the gym, and so you're making it
Speaker 1: harder on yourself. If you go to a gym that's
Speaker 1: a distance from your house or your job, you're much
Speaker 1: less likely to go. It's the difference between an exercise
Speaker 1: habit and not having one. I see. So what differentiates
Speaker 1: those who have to score well in these self report
Speaker 1: measures than those who don't. What are the self control
Speaker 1: people have. Yeah. Self control is an interesting concept because
Speaker 1: we think that that's what determines whether we're going to
Speaker 1: be successful at changing our behavior or not. Right, if
Speaker 1: you have good self control, strong ability to resist temptations,
Speaker 1: then you should be somebody who is able to make
Speaker 1: decisions and stick with them. If you have poor self control,
Speaker 1: then you won't be able to do that. That's the
Speaker 1: way most of us think. So when we fail at
Speaker 1: our New Year's resolutions, when we're not able to meet
Speaker 1: our goals, then we tend to assume it must be
Speaker 1: something wrong with my self control. I didn't want it enough. Instead,
Speaker 1: what science has shown is that people who score high
Speaker 1: on self control scales actually know how to form habits,
Speaker 1: and they've automated the experience so that they don't need
Speaker 1: to rely on self control. They're not even making decisions.
Speaker 1: It's their automatic response when they're in a situation. It's
Speaker 1: like you driving a car. When you're in that car,
Speaker 1: you're driving your familiar automobile. You don't have to make
Speaker 1: decisions most of the time unless something unusual happens in
Speaker 1: the traffic, and then we hope you are paying attention.
Speaker 1: But most of the time we're not. So that kind
Speaker 1: of autopilot is what high self controlled people use to
Speaker 1: meet their goals. They understand about friction and they understand
Speaker 1: about making it easy for them to achieve goals in line. Well,
Speaker 1: that's very interesting, so I'm naturally curious. So your thoughts
Speaker 1: about ego depletion theory then, have you done work on
Speaker 1: that at all? Kind of viewing this self controls this
Speaker 1: kind of limited resource that is tied to like glucose
Speaker 1: in our brains. Yeah, I have not done anything with
Speaker 1: the glucose mechanism. I think there's a good question about that.
Speaker 1: The idea that self control is a muscle that it's
Speaker 1: depleted with use that was very popular for a while
Speaker 1: and is now being questioned by many researchers. My explanation,
Speaker 1: I have done research in the area, and I sometimes
Speaker 1: do get ego depletion effects so that people who have
Speaker 1: performed difficult tasks and are mentally tired, mentally depleted, they
Speaker 1: tend to fall back on their habits more than when
Speaker 1: people are more actively in control. And I think some
Speaker 1: of the controversy has come because the experimental work is
Speaker 1: not always ideally set up to capture that phenomenon. It's
Speaker 1: a bit more elusive than many of us imagined initially. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that talking about such a complex mechanism, you'd
Speaker 1: sort of expect that. So why doesn't white knuckling through
Speaker 1: temptation work. It's hard, it's not fun. No, most of
Speaker 1: us don't enjoy it. It's a hard approach to stick
Speaker 1: with simply because we don't enjoy it. And there was
Speaker 1: a very famous experiment done about twenty or thirty years
Speaker 1: ago by Dan Wegner with the difficulty of not thinking
Speaker 1: about white bears. Are you familiar with this, Oh, definitely yes.
Speaker 1: What he showed in that study for listeners who aren't
Speaker 1: familiar with it, but he showed in that study is
Speaker 1: if you are trying not to think of something, it
Speaker 1: gives that thing energy, so that when you are allowed
Speaker 1: to think of it in the future, you do so
Speaker 1: with great frequency. You think about it even more often
Speaker 1: after you've been trying to inhibit it. So the point
Speaker 1: to the study was to suggest that we have this
Speaker 1: sort of boomerang response, this counterproductive response. When we try
Speaker 1: to inhibit something, it activates it further and we have
Speaker 1: a hard time not thinking about it, and we've all
Speaker 1: done this right. When you diet, you think about food constantly.
Speaker 1: When you are trying not to spend money, you can't
Speaker 1: help but notice all the new things that other people
Speaker 1: are buying that you are denying yourself. This counterproductive quality
Speaker 1: makes it very hard for us to be successful at
Speaker 1: self denial. It's not a good way to try to
Speaker 1: change our behavior. It's not going to work. I see, Well,
Speaker 1: it's good to know that there's other ways of getting
Speaker 1: it what you want to get at. Yes. One of
Speaker 1: the benefits of having a mind that has many different systems,
Speaker 1: interconnected systems, is that we have many different ways of
Speaker 1: learning and thinking. Some of them are accessible to us,
Speaker 1: we're aware of them, and some are not. And the
Speaker 1: habit system is not available for us to introspect about.
Speaker 1: We're learning habits all the time and we're not aware
Speaker 1: of it. Doesn't the habit system kind of operate in
Speaker 1: an if then sort of code source code in a way? Yes,
Speaker 1: because because the habit system really is a sort of
Speaker 1: mental shortcut. If I'm in this context, what should I
Speaker 1: do to get a reward? That's what the habit system answers,
Speaker 1: And it's actually the question it asks is what have
Speaker 1: I done in the past that has gotten a reward.
Speaker 1: So when you wake up in the morning, you go
Speaker 1: to your kitchen. I go to my kitchen, I make
Speaker 1: coffee without even asking myself how or do I want
Speaker 1: it today or will my day be better with it
Speaker 1: or without it? I just make it. I do what
Speaker 1: I did in the past to get that reward of
Speaker 1: a morning jolt to help you wake up. But the
Speaker 1: problem is that this is where you get into bad habits.
Speaker 1: That the habit system is very backward focused. It focuses
Speaker 1: on past rewards, what you experienced as a reward in
Speaker 1: the past. It doesn't recognize so well what you want
Speaker 1: to get as a reward today. So if you decide
Speaker 1: that coffee isn't good for your health, you may still
Speaker 1: find yourself thinking about it as soon as you get
Speaker 1: up in the morning, because that's what you've typically done,
Speaker 1: and that's what your brain is organized to focus on
Speaker 1: first thing in the morning, making coffee. That's your habit.
Speaker 1: So I want to change a habit, do we know
Speaker 1: how many do we have a certain idea of how
Speaker 1: many days such a thing it will take. People say
Speaker 1: you could change any habit in twenty one days. Is
Speaker 1: that another thing that people just pull out others that's
Speaker 1: not informed by science. But yes, that is not very
Speaker 1: scientifically based. In fact, we think that if you're interested
Speaker 1: in the origins, we think it comes from a self
Speaker 1: help book in the nineteen sixties on along it take
Speaker 1: to get used to a plastic surgery, change in your
Speaker 1: face or appearance of some kind. Oh, that's amazing, you
Speaker 1: track that down. Yeah, it doesn't have much to do
Speaker 1: with habit formation or change more changes in our appearance.
Speaker 1: To form a habit takes much longer, typically than three weeks.
Speaker 1: Two to three months is a better estimate. If you're
Speaker 1: doing it reasonably consistently and you're getting rewarded for it,
Speaker 1: so you like what you're doing, and you're likely to
Speaker 1: do it again in the future, then two to three
Speaker 1: months is probably the best estimate we have at this point.
Speaker 1: For actions to become so automated that there's so of
Speaker 1: second nature. They're what you do without having to think
Speaker 1: or make decisions. That's how long it will take. Changing
Speaker 1: habits is something very different, and this is odd to
Speaker 1: think about for our conscious decision making self. But once
Speaker 1: habits have formed, rewards don't make a whole lot of difference.
Speaker 1: In fact, the consequences of the action become relatively unimportant.
Speaker 1: And that's what researchers call the gold standard for knowing
Speaker 1: whether something is a habit. If you change the context,
Speaker 1: will people still keep doing it? If you change the reward,
Speaker 1: will people keep doing it? Change the outcome of the behavior.
Speaker 1: That's the gold standard of whether something is a habit
Speaker 1: or not. And let me give you an example of that.
Speaker 1: I did a study a few years ago in a
Speaker 1: local movie cinema and we gave people stale popcorn to eat. Actually,
Speaker 1: some got a bag of fresh, some got a bag
Speaker 1: of stale. They didn't know that they were getting that
Speaker 1: anyone was getting stale popcorn. They thought it was all fresh.
Speaker 1: And people who had habits to eat popcorn in the
Speaker 1: movie cinema, they ate it whether it was stale or fresh.
Speaker 1: It could tell us they hated the stale and it
Speaker 1: was awfully stale, so it was really not good popcorn.
Speaker 1: But they ate it anyway because they were in a
Speaker 1: movie cinema with all of the cues around them activating
Speaker 1: the habit and the outcome, the taste, the reward didn't
Speaker 1: matter that much. People who didn't have habits to eat
Speaker 1: popcorn in the movie cinema. They ate the fresh stuff
Speaker 1: and avoided the stale. So they were acting rationally the
Speaker 1: way we'd expect people to act. But the people with
Speaker 1: habits were just repeating what they did before because in
Speaker 1: the past it had been rewarding, and so the habit perpetuated. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a great study for a sadistic psychologist to administer.
Speaker 1: You're a sadistic psychologist, but I say, I enjoy that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The whole idea was to test the limits to which
Speaker 1: people would go to repeat habits, and that was the
Speaker 1: idea behind the study. And what it suggests is that
Speaker 1: you can't change habits by changing rewards, right, by finding
Speaker 1: some new reward that might work for some other behavior.
Speaker 1: That's a common meme that is suggested in the popular litters,
Speaker 1: sure for changing habits, but in fact habits don't work
Speaker 1: that way. You have to change the cues that activate
Speaker 1: the behavior. Yeah, so in order to change a habit,
Speaker 1: you have to add friction or remove the cues so
Speaker 1: that it's harder to do and it doesn't come to
Speaker 1: mind automatically. Can you give like an example on how
Speaker 1: I can stop picking my nails. Well, let me give
Speaker 1: you an even more impressive one, which has to do
Speaker 1: with smoking. Our country decided about fifty sixty years ago
Speaker 1: to start putting friction on smoking. We started taxing the
Speaker 1: purchase of cigarettes. We removed advertising cigarette advertising. We banned
Speaker 1: smoking from most public places, and we've removed it from
Speaker 1: the storage olves. You can't buy cigarettes by picking up
Speaker 1: a pack in the store. Someone has to check your
Speaker 1: age and give it to you. All of those things
Speaker 1: added friction to smoking, and in so doing we cut
Speaker 1: smoking from almost fifty percent of the population smokers to
Speaker 1: only fifteen percent today, which shows the power of the
Speaker 1: context we're in to change our behavior, because it changed
Speaker 1: what was easy. It was no longer. It was like
Speaker 1: everyone was now in that five miles away from the
Speaker 1: gym study and they it was hard to get there.
Speaker 1: It just starts being too much work, and after a while,
Speaker 1: the discouragement makes it easier to change. So what would
Speaker 1: you do to add friction to biting your nails or
Speaker 1: picking at them or that's a habit that many people have,
Speaker 1: putting cyanide on my fingernails, Yeah, there you go, So
Speaker 1: I wouldn't bite them, or it would be what we
Speaker 1: call one trial learning. Yeah. Yeah, put something unpleasant, unpleasant
Speaker 1: tasting on your nails, or wear gloves so you have
Speaker 1: to take them off, particularly at times when you know
Speaker 1: that you typically bite your nails. It could be that
Speaker 1: you do it because you get anxious, maybe when you're
Speaker 1: working or during difficult conversations. Those times are the times
Speaker 1: to practice automating. Sitting on your hands, wearing gloves, painting
Speaker 1: your nails with something that tastes bad. All of those
Speaker 1: things will help you in the future to stop biting.
Speaker 1: They add friction. Well, thanks for this free advice here,
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. I would try to think, what's the
Speaker 1: difference between habits and addiction or is just addiction just
Speaker 1: a habit that has become so repetitive that you feel
Speaker 1: like it's interfering with your longer term goals. I mean,
Speaker 1: how would you define the distinction between the two. Well,
Speaker 1: I think habits are a component of most addictions, but
Speaker 1: addictions are something more. Addictions are at least with substance,
Speaker 1: using substances to a point where you sort of lose
Speaker 1: control over the rest of your life. Addictions hijack this
Speaker 1: habit learning system, but addictions have many other components as well.
Speaker 1: So they're like really bad habit run amok. They are.
Speaker 1: They take over people's lives in ways that most habits don't.
Speaker 1: Most of our habits are just much more circumscribed to
Speaker 1: specific contexts, so that when we're in the context, the
Speaker 1: response we've practiced comes to mind, and that's just a
Speaker 1: shortcut for what to do, and we usually just do it.
Speaker 1: I see. So you're talking about I mean, you're talking
Speaker 1: about a lot of using friction to change our habits.
Speaker 1: How do companies like Uber reduced friction in user experience? Well,
Speaker 1: if you remember a few years ago, Uber had this
Speaker 1: pricing schedule where you would get this lightning bolt, it
Speaker 1: would say that prices have increased, say one point five percent,
Speaker 1: and you would be you would get this surcharge, this
Speaker 1: additional charge for every for the ride that you wanted
Speaker 1: to take. And the problem with that is those of
Speaker 1: us who have an Uber habit, that made us start
Speaker 1: to think it was a very bad idea. And Uber
Speaker 1: quit that because I figured out that it was friction
Speaker 1: on people. Using Uber, You're making people think and making
Speaker 1: people make decisions about whether to take the ride right
Speaker 1: now or not. And that's the last thing Uber wants.
Speaker 1: As any company, you just want people to be using
Speaker 1: your product automatically and not wondering, huh do I really
Speaker 1: want to go in this ride right now? So that
Speaker 1: pricing structure has since changed and we only get a
Speaker 1: standard price for the Uber ride. That's sort of an average.
Speaker 1: They have average, they have better data, so they're averaging
Speaker 1: the cost. I see, well, I now understand this link.
Speaker 1: I was trying to see what's in common between that
Speaker 1: gender differences research you've done in this topic. And I
Speaker 1: mean you're really big into the content. You're big into
Speaker 1: context and the environment. You could imagine like Robert Pullman
Speaker 1: would be like, you know, it's about it's about the genes,
Speaker 1: it's about it's a trade perspective. There are people with
Speaker 1: self control and that's influenced by the genes. You know.
Speaker 1: But it sounds like you'ven't invoked the G word once. No.
Speaker 1: I everyone has the ability to learn habits. In fact,
Speaker 1: that is common across all the mammalian species. So rats
Speaker 1: have habits, dogs have habits, cats have habits, whales have habits.
Speaker 1: We are all genetically in down to form habits in
Speaker 1: similar ways. What we find pleasurable and enjoyable and what
Speaker 1: our goals are. Those might be influenced to some extent
Speaker 1: by our genetic structure and certainly by our child rearing
Speaker 1: and developmental experiences. But the habit mechanism itself is pretty
Speaker 1: basic and it's common to all mammalian species. As I said,
Speaker 1: this really gets this research program really gets the heart
Speaker 1: of how much we can change our personalities. Our personality
Speaker 1: traits just repeated habits of emotional functioning, behavioral manifestations, et cetera,
Speaker 1: motivational processes. I mean you must take a habit of
Speaker 1: perspective on personality as well. I guess no, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: argue that I don't think habits are personality traits. No,
Speaker 1: habits are the repeated behaviors that we've learned to do
Speaker 1: in certain situations because we've been rewarded for them in
Speaker 1: the past, and personality traits are something quite different. You'll
Speaker 1: need to ask a personality psychologists. Well, I'm a personality psychologist,
Speaker 1: you okay? But I was thinking that William Fleeson's his approach.
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, he has this idea. He's like,
Speaker 1: you're you're only more extroverted, or more agreeable, or more
Speaker 1: moral to the extent to which you repeatedly are those things.
Speaker 1: So it just had me thinking that it seems like
Speaker 1: the habit approach could probably be integrated with the William
Speaker 1: Fleeson sort of way of thinking about personality traits as
Speaker 1: density distributions. People who are more introverted just are more introverted.
Speaker 1: There's not like they're always introverted. They're just more on
Speaker 1: the four or five out of five, you know, like
Speaker 1: our scale during the course of their data average. So
Speaker 1: isn't that essentially like their habit is to be more introverted?
Speaker 1: I think probably what could frame it that way? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Possibly the habits that we have studied thus far are
Speaker 1: more discreete specific behaviors. Yeah, yeah, I see, and that
Speaker 1: introversion might lead people to practice certain behaviors that could
Speaker 1: be helpful or could be hurtful to them in the
Speaker 1: long run. So they might form good bad habits because
Speaker 1: of who they are, their preferences, their likes, their attitudes,
Speaker 1: their approach to life. Yeah yeah, I mean your research
Speaker 1: gets to the heart of so much of what people
Speaker 1: really care about in their lives, which is how much
Speaker 1: can they change? How can culture? I mean again, I'm
Speaker 1: going to keep going back to your generative stuff because
Speaker 1: I thought it was really I mean, your gender difference
Speaker 1: work actually made an impact on my research. And you
Speaker 1: did this work and there was this kind of like
Speaker 1: the evolutionary hypothesis, there's a cultural role hip. That's what
Speaker 1: explains me preferences across different cultures, and you sort of
Speaker 1: have this hybrid model. Yes, so the basic idea in
Speaker 1: our approach, this was with Alice Abley that I did
Speaker 1: this work. The basic idea behind our approach was that, yes,
Speaker 1: men and women have potentially different genetic orientations. Men might
Speaker 1: be oriented to do certain things, women other things. But
Speaker 1: what makes the human species, So what's made us so
Speaker 1: successful is culture and the ways that culture determines men
Speaker 1: and women's activities in our society is really a huge
Speaker 1: determinant of what we think men and women are like.
Speaker 1: So in our society, women work good percentage of women work,
Speaker 1: maybe sixty seventy percent, almost as much as men, but
Speaker 1: they tend to work in slightly different jobs, not as
Speaker 1: well paid. They tend to work in caretaking jobs. You
Speaker 1: still see them more than men as elementary school teachers,
Speaker 1: nursery school teachers, nurses. Those distributions are changing, but it's
Speaker 1: still the case that women tend to be in more
Speaker 1: caretaking positions, So we make the inference women must have
Speaker 1: those attributes, and men tend to be in more higher status,
Speaker 1: higher paying positions and workforce, and they're less likely to
Speaker 1: be stay at home dads than women are being stay
Speaker 1: at home moms. So we make the inferences about what
Speaker 1: men should be like based on our experience of men
Speaker 1: in our culture, And the basic argument is that our
Speaker 1: stereotypes reflect our understanding of what men and women do
Speaker 1: in our specific culture. Do you think that motivation plays
Speaker 1: a role there. Surely more women on average than men
Speaker 1: on average are interested in the caretaking professions, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we've seen those that change radically in the last
Speaker 1: couple of decades. Many more women than men are now
Speaker 1: graduating from college. We see women being interested, equally interested,
Speaker 1: or more interested than men in biology, biological sciences. Graduates
Speaker 1: in biology are leaning starting to lean more towards women
Speaker 1: than men. That's true at the undergraduate level. That's becoming
Speaker 1: true also at the graduate level. The idea that we
Speaker 1: have these fixed interests just doesn't seem to match very
Speaker 1: well the historical data. Yeah, so I'm just trying to
Speaker 1: understand the position. I thought that your physician was that
Speaker 1: you shouldainly don't deny that there are some biological contributions. Sure,
Speaker 1: but yeah, but you're talking about this interaction effect because
Speaker 1: I think that one could probably make a good case
Speaker 1: that that something hasn't changed. I don't think that that
Speaker 1: women are just as interested in social status and dominance,
Speaker 1: you know of like a leadership things as men are
Speaker 1: on average. Seems that seems to be a pretty robust
Speaker 1: sex difference. And I'm wondering, I mean, would you argue
Speaker 1: there's no biological contribution whatsoever to that sort of thing. No,
Speaker 1: I would never argue that, but I would out that
Speaker 1: an arm do not have access to those positions as
Speaker 1: much as men do. Is that because of the patriarchy.
Speaker 1: Because of patriarchy. So it's very hard to tease apart
Speaker 1: what is actually due to an inherited disposition and what
Speaker 1: is actually due to the social circumstances that we find
Speaker 1: ourselves in. And I think that right there is just
Speaker 1: this common thread throughout your whole career that I now see.
Speaker 1: I now clearly see it. I was I was trying
Speaker 1: to figure it out. I was like, how did how
Speaker 1: does this the gender difference research link to this? But
Speaker 1: I think that you know, you really have spent your
Speaker 1: career showing that regardless of all these other theories and
Speaker 1: things about and UH and inheritability research, behavioral genetics, and
Speaker 1: and other aspects, there's still quite a bit of wiggle
Speaker 1: room there in terms of how we can change and
Speaker 1: particular our habits that we may feel like are cast
Speaker 1: and stone forever. You're kind of take another look at that?
Speaker 1: Is that right exactly? Yay? I could summarize that well.
Speaker 1: Thank you for your tremendous career, Wendy. Seriously, it's a
Speaker 1: very impressive putting it all together in this book that's
Speaker 1: very digestible and very very easy to read and apply
Speaker 1: to one's life. So thank you so much. Oh, thank
Speaker 1: you for having me. I hope people have a chance
Speaker 1: to read the book. And thanks again for being on
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast. Thanks for listening to this episode of
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some
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