In my previous blogs, I discussed how tech companies capitalize on principles of behavioral psychology to get us “hooked” so to speak. While their strategies are powerful, they still depend on you to not just sit there but do something. You must act.
1. Why Do We Fall For the Trap?
A habit is a behavior that occurs without any conscious effort. The more mental or physical effort required, the less likely it is to become a habit.
Dr. B.J. Fogg at Stanford University developed a model for understanding behavioral drives. He posits the following three factors underlie all behaviors:
Enough motivation
Ability to complete the action
A trigger
In other words for a behavior (B) to occur there must be motivation (M), ability (A), and a trigger (T) or B = MAT.
Motivation – Motivation is the desire and energy that moves us towards an action. And, core human drivers are to seek pleasure and avoid pain, seek hope and avoid fear, and to seek social connection and avoid rejection.
Ability – Ability relates to the ease or difficulty of a task for the individual. And the more perceived difficulty in the task, the less likely someone is to do it. Conversely, the easier a task is perceived to be, the more likely the person is to do it. Fogg outlines 6 factors that contribute to simplicity.
How long it takes to complete the action (i.e., the shorter the better)
The financial cost of completing the action
The physical effort required
The level of mental effort required
The social acceptability of the behavior
How closely the behavior fits with existing routines/habits
Trigger - A trigger, whether internal or external to the individual, tells us what to do next. Of course, I discussed this in detail in my last blog. But to quickly recap, external triggers are those that exist outside the individual and cue the desired behaviors while internal triggers are drives that compel the person to activate the behavior. While compulsive behaviors may be triggered by external cues initially, when activated enough they become associated with internal states and drives, at which point they are internally driven.
2. So, What Can I Do About It?
The formula above, of course, only creates the conditions under which a behavior is likely to take place. It does not guarantee one activates the behavior.
Good or bad, habitual behaviors occur mindlessly. In other words, outside of our conscious awareness, our physiology is activating behaviors in order to meet its needs. And typically, such “mindless” behavior is unskillful, meaning it meets short term needs at the cost of long-term consequences to ourselves or others.
As such, one of the necessary steps to curbing unwanted habitual, and even addictive behaviors, is to bring forth greater conscious awareness. This, of course, is a very important topic that we address in other blogs and videos. But one of the ways to begin cultivating greater moment to moment awareness, and the ability to choose skillful over unskillful behaviors, is a formal mindfulness practice.
For my next blog, however, I will be turning my attention to the power of variable rewards as it is the next ingredient tech companies use to get us “hooked.”