An interview with behavioral scientist, author, & habits expert Samuel Salzer

The psychology of habits is one of the most fascinating - and most important areas of behavioral science. As Will Durant remarked, paraphrasing Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do… therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit”

Given the importance of habits in our lives, understanding their psychology is crucial. One of the key challenges is that habits, as a concept, has taken on additional meaning and values which can crowd out the science. The way we speak about habits, and the scientific terminology, have significantly diverged.

To help bridge this gap between practical definition and science, we speak with habit expert Samuel Salzer. Having studied the science of habits for over a decade, Sam is the host of the popular newsletter Habit Weekly, Co-host of The Behavioral Design podcast, and co-founder of Nuance and The Habit Coach Professionals.

In this interview we separate set the record straight on the defining the psychology of habits

Let’s dive in

Most of us understand what a habit is intuitively, but may have difficulty fully nailing down a definition. To start off, how would you define a habit?

Defining a habit can be tricky because how we talk about them in everyday life is different from how they’re discussed in academic terms. I like to use a standard definition, which sees a habit as a cognitive process where a specific cue triggers an impulse to act based on a learned association. In simpler terms, this means that in certain situations, our brains have been trained to act automatically without needing to think.

There's a lot of discussion surrounding the role of rewards in habits. While initial rewards are important, what's intriguing about habits is their tendency to become less sensitive to rewards over time. This challenges the traditional habit loop model, which doesn't accurately depict how habits form or how they function before and after formation.

Additionally, before a habit is formed, there’s significant cognitive processing between the contextual cue and the behavior itself. It's not simply a matter of cue, behavior, reward initially, as there's significant mental activity taking place. In short, the simple habit loop view overlooks some of the most crucial aspects of how habits actually form.

There are a lot of conversations these days about the value of habits, and where they should fit into a person’s life. How have you come to think about the modern discourse around the psychology of habits?

I’ve noticed a general tendency to equate habits with personal development or growth. Habits have almost become a measure of your personal worth: if you have good habits, you're doing good, and you can be considered a good productive person.

This perception is evident in popular psychology literature, with books like The Power of Habit, and Atomic Habits, and others attempting to categorize habits into good or bad. Additionally, books like "Hooked" aim to popularize habits within a product context, focusing on how to design products that engage users effectively. In both cases, habits are portrayed as the key to success, whether in personal life or business.  In our personal lives, habits have become viewed as somewhat of a panacea for leading a fulfilling life – the more good habits you have, the happier you'll be.

While there’s some truth to this, it introduces a disconnect between expectations and reality. Not everyone necessarily benefits from an obsession to engineer habits in every aspect of their lives–nor is that possible.

Given the popularity of the term, what do you think most people would be surprised to learn about the psychology of habits?

One thing that’s really interesting about habits is that they are actually harder to spot than one might think. Habitual actions are less a specific type of behavior but rather a way of performing a behavior. This means that observing someone performing a task, even repeatedly, doesn't necessarily confirm whether it's habitual or not. Take, for instance, someone who frequently checks their smartphone. While it might seem like a habitual action, they could be consciously checking for specific updates or be driven by differing reasons to do so each time, rather than doing it out of automatic habit.

The distinction lies in how the behavior is executed. If someone checks their smartphone in response to notifications without much conscious thought, then it's habitual. However, if they decide to approach the task mindfully in the next moment, the behavior ceases to be habitual. This challenges the common perception of habits as a fixed type of behavior and highlights that it's more about the manner in which a behavior is done.

Essentially, you can't definitively observe a behavior, even a repetitive one, and determine if it's habitual or not. Certain observable patterns can provide strong indicators of habitual behavior. For example, behaviors that are consistently and frequently performed in specific contexts (time, place, after other behavior) often suggest habitual behavior. This consistency and context-specificity, when observed, can be good indicators that a behavior is likely habitual. However, in the end, it hinges on internal mechanisms within the individual - automaticity and responsiveness to contextual cues and potential rewards.

This presents a significant challenge in measuring habits accurately. While traditional methods of self-reporting have limitations, they remain a valuable tool, especially when combined with other methods.  Recent approaches like Predicting Context Sensitivity (PCS) have attempted to gauge automaticity or relied on observations of repeated, stable behaviors in specific contexts to infer habit formation.

For example, if someone consistently performs the same action in a given context without conscious effort, it suggests habitual behavior. However, even these methods have limitations in fully capturing the nuances of habit formation due to their inherently internal nature.

There's also research in neuroscience aimed at identifying neural signatures associated with habitual versus deliberate behaviors. And so it's possible in principle. But in a real-world scenario, outside of the lab, it can actually be very hard to discern what is habitual and what is not.

More from Samuel Salzer on The Impact of Habits on Novelty, Experience, and Memory, and how we can reconcile the Habit Psychology Paradox

Photo by Ryoji Iwata via UnSplash