The Psychology of Habits, Research Paper Example

Introduction

This paper seeks to explore the psychology of habits and specifically how to break bad habits. It shall provide insight into some useful techniques, and strategies that I have employed in an endeavor to break from some bad habit. Habits are those behavioral traits that individuals possess and often demonstrate without thinking about them. They are behavioral traits that are demonstrated on a daily basis. These traits are developed by linking pain or pleasure to something. However, habits can be good or bad.  Good habits are those behavioral traits that benefit or add value into an individual’s life. Whereas bad habits are those that on the contrary, cause harm or even destroy the person’s life. Habits are significant when a person desires to live a productive and self-disciplined life.

I have in the past tried to stop smoking, but have found it difficult to totally abstain from the habit. Several techniques have been employed, but complete abstinence has been a milestone to achieve. In this endeavor to stop smoking, I tried to stop smoking at once instead of cutting down gradually on the number of cigarettes smoked in a day. As it would be expected, this technique failed. I embarked on the project once again, with a different approach. The approach adopted will be based on the following techniques; chewing gum when the craving to smoke presents itself, seeking other ways to occupying myself during my free time. This is important because I smoke only during my free time. Consistency of purpose would be the third technique to facilitate me to break the habit of smoking.

Techniques and Strategies That Can Be Utilized To Break a Habit

Some important strategies that may be employed in pursuit of accomplishing the goal include, Alternate responses, cues and antecedents, extinction, contracting, response chains, and lastly seeking help. In extinction, I should try to find out the cause of the reinforcing of an unwanted response and eliminate, circumvent, or impede the reinforcement. In cues and antecedents, try to evade, limit, or eliminate stimuli that educe the bad habit. In Alternate responses, this is a good strategy for change, is to try to get the same reinforcement with a new response.  In response chains, break up response chains that precede an undesired behavior; this will help break the bad habit. The key idea is to write down the chain of events that leads to an undesired response. Contracting refers to behavioral contract. In this I should state a specific problem behavior I want to control, or a goal I want to achieve. Also state the rewards I will receive, privileges I will forfeit, or punishments I must accept. The contract must be signed by me and a person I trust. A behavioral contract may be motivating, especially when mild punishment is part of the agreement. In getting help, attempting to change or alter my own behavior may be more difficult than it sounds. If I try a self-modification project but find it impossible to reach my goals, I should seek the available professional.

Rewarding may be given constantly (after each response) or on a timetable of partial reinforcement. Partial reinforcement creates larger resistance to extinction. Five basic schedules of reinforcement are continuous, fixed ratio, variable ratio, fixed interval, and variable interval. Each schedule produces a dissimilar outline of responding. Stimuli that go before a reinforced response have a tendency to control when and where operant responses occur (stimuli control). Two features of stimulus control are discrimination and generalization. In generalization, an operant response may take place whilst stimuli comparable to that prior reinforcement are there. In discrimination, responses are set in the occurrence of discriminative stimuli linked with reinforcement (S+) and withdrawn in the occurrence of stimuli linked with non-reinforcement (S-). Punishment decreases responses frequency. Punishment takes place whilst a response is pursued by the commencement of an aversive occurrence or by the elimination of a positive occurrence (response cost).

In the light of the above, I have drawn three plans. In the first two plans, A and B, I plan to utilize rewarding technique in order to break the habit of smoking. In plan A, I plan to reward myself in two ways. The first is that for each stick of cigarette that I forgo, I will pay myself and save money in a container. Secondly, at the close of this project, I will spend the saved money in a manner that I will feel good about myself. This will be in a manner that I will add value into my life. In plan B, I intend to give myself a time limit of four weeks. In the event that I am successful in abstaining from smoking for the four weeks period, I will reward myself with a good meal.  In plan C, I intend to have a sponsor whom I would call when the craving for a cigarette tends to overcome me.  I seek to keep a record of success and failures in the four week period. However, though taking inventory of an event each time it occurs is the most appropriate way in regard to accuracy, it may be impractical to do so. One may otherwise decide to take inventory of events regularly after some time. This may be after some hours, or in the evening when at home from work. An alarm may be appropriate as a reminder to make necessary recordings.
Sometimes the behavior I may want to count takes place too fast to make record taking in real time realistic, and too generally to make retrospective record taking accurate. In this case, I am interested in taking inventory of the number of times I overcome the urge to light a cigarette, as well as the number of times I failed.  It’s not difficult to take inventory of events, but sometimes I may want to capture more information than just that an occurrence took place. I may want to take inventory of how powerfully I felt the craving for a cigarette before lighting up, as well as the actuality that I did light the cigarette. In the event of such a case, I need to choose on a scale for evaluating the intensity of the smoking urge prior to the commencement of monitoring, and then utilize that scale constantly all through the record taking duration.

The concluding section of a self-monitoring endeavor entails critically analyzing the data. An appropriate kind of tabulation is presented in figure 1. The pattern depicted on Monday is repetitive throughout the week. At the close of the fourth week, I realize that, every time I am with my friends, I am relaxed and I am able to overcome the urge to light up a cigarette. I seek the assistance of a sponsor whom I can call each time I feel overwhelmed by the urge to smoke.

Figure 1

My Daily Smoking Record