Creatures of Habit
Activities can be thought of as habit forming—even addictive—when their value today becomes greater the more one has done them in the past. Many of our behaviors exhibit this sort of momentum, including good ones like hand washing and bad ones like substance abuse.
Habits tie our past, current, and future selves together.
When designing a nurturing environment for families, habits cannot be ignored. The baggage that people bring with them to a community will influence how each person acts there. And the habits that are nurtured or discouraged in the community will impact people long into the future.
This post will introduce a couple models from economics that facilitate thinking about habits and discuss my takeaways.
First, Becker and Murphy (1988) introduce a mathematical model of Rational Addiction. It illustrates the conditions in which even a perfectly planning robot might pursue a harmful addiction. As long as each subsequent hit of a drug is valued more highly than the future unhappiness it causes, the addiction will continue. (Conversely, with something good like handwashing, the habit will build as long as the inconvenience of each wash is outweighed by the future benefits.) Here’s one of the authors explaining the basic model of rational addiction in a 9-minute YouTube video.
This type of theory is useful not because we think people are automatons, but because it demonstrates how much of problematic behavior can be explained by ordinary reasoning. That turns out to be a lot. A despondent robot might pursue a strategy of, essentially, suicide by drug addiction. If the robot’s estimates of prices or benefits are adjusted mid-addiction, we expect to observe drastic consumption adjustments like binges and cold-turkey quitting. Addiction itself is portrayed as a choice that is only problematic if the agent’s predictions about the future are wrong.
The opposite extreme from Rational Addiction theory is to think that addicts have completely lost control over their choices. In formal terms, a myopic addict has time-inconsistent preferences. One moment, a person has chosen to quit their addiction and, the next, they lose control and relapse. Thinking Fast and Slow (Kahneman, 2011) is a good reference from behavioral economics to characterize why this might happen.
Both these models are useful for a community designer to understand if you think that everybody plans, but imperfectly. First, the models lay out a mathematical story for how and why people’s past baggage matters. Second, they suggest external incentive structures and education that can be put in place to encourage our rational minds to pursue healthy habits. Third, they show how better internal decision-making habits can lead to better behaviors.
It’s important to note here that economics is obviously not the main discipline with expertise in habit formation. Economics introduces mathematical reasoning that can help one appreciate the importance of accounting for habits and outline high-level contours of the topic. But medical professionals should play a large role in developing real policies and community design choices.
As a final note, a lot of what we do online is habit forming. As people continually shift more of their activities online, where everything is built to ensnare attention, intentional and explicit focus on habit formation will become more important than ever. Kwon et al. (2016) do a good job presenting how to think about addiction to social media and online gaming.
When choosing to engage on a new social media platform, I know the experience will be habit forming and hard to stop once I start. Thus, I must carefully predict ahead of time whether the habit will provide me a net benefit. Once I’ve spent some time on the app and learned about the costs and benefits, I should summon all my rationality to determine whether to continue. Perhaps a pre-arranged accountability partner can help me make that determination. If it turns out I should quit the new app, strategies and resources are available to help me do it.
P.P.S. A thought from St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 6:12: “‘I have the right to do anything,’ you say—–but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’–—but I will not be mastered by anything.”
A lot of succeeding as an adult is avoiding being mastered, between alcohol, drugs, overeating, overshopping, child support, legal trouble, video games, porn, and Internet entertainment generally. It’s a dangerous world. I feel like we should all be in a preemptive 12-step program.
It’s worth noting that a 12-step program mirrors the Christian process of sanctification. Compare the 12 steps and this passage from the Psalms.
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
12 Steps
9 How can a young person stay on the path of purity?
By living according to your word.
10 I seek you with all my heart;
do not let me stray from your commands.
11 I have hidden your word in my heart
that I might not sin against you.
12 Praise be to you, Lord;
teach me your decrees.
13 With my lips I recount
all the laws that come from your mouth.
14 I rejoice in following your statutes
as one rejoices in great riches.
15 I meditate on your precepts
and consider your ways.
16 I delight in your decrees;
I will not neglect your word.
Psalm 119:9-16
Karl Marx said “religion is the opium of the masses.” He was right in the sense that focusing on God acts as a substitute for substance abuse or other destructive habits. Both help us cope with adult stress.
(Side note: Whether or not religion is foolish as Marx implied is a question of unprovable fact, about whether God exists. A Christian will tell you God helps us see through our apparent troubles to a safer, more optimistic, deeper and truer reality. From Psalm 34:8, “Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.”)