The goal-dependent automaticity of drinking habits
In recent treatments of habitual social behaviour, habits are conceptualized as a form of goal‐directed automatic behaviour that are mentally represented as goal‐action links. Three experiments tested this conceptualization in the context of students' drinking (alcohol consumption) habits. Part...
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Published in | British journal of social psychology Vol. 44; no. 1; pp. 47 - 63 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Oxford, UK
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
01.03.2005
British Psychological Society |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | In recent treatments of habitual social behaviour, habits are conceptualized as a form of goal‐directed automatic behaviour that are mentally represented as goal‐action links. Three experiments tested this conceptualization in the context of students' drinking (alcohol consumption) habits. Participants were randomly assigned to conditions where either a goal related to drinking behaviour (socializing) was activated, or an unrelated goal was activated. In addition, participants' drinking habits were measured. The dependent variable in Experiments 1 and 2 was readiness to drink, operationalized by speed of responding to the action concept ‘drinking’ in a verb verification task. Experiment 3 used the uptake of a voucher to measure drinking behaviour. Findings supported the view that when habits are established, simply activating a goal related to the focal behaviour automatically elicits that behaviour. These findings are consistent with a goal‐dependent conception of habit. Possibilities for interventions designed to attenuate undesirable habitual behaviours are considered. |
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Bibliography: | istex:36D42AF9812981E34B9149D0C7440B097481D109 ark:/67375/WNG-P494M61B-X ArticleID:BJSO408 ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 |
ISSN: | 0144-6665 2044-8309 |
DOI: | 10.1348/014466604X23446 |