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VI. Habit

Earlier, a distinction was made between man's inherited nature (instinct) and his acquired nature (habits). Pyle begins the chapter with a few examples:

• A man recognizes that he often fails to turn out the light in his basement, which burns costly electricity. He attaches a length of string to the cord so that he will run into it when he comes up the stairs, and doing so reminds him to switch off the light. After this behavior becomes ingrained, he may remove the string and will still remember to turn off the light as he exits his basement.
• In mathematics, children chant multiplication tables. There is no simply way to remember "nine nines are eighty-one" - but if the child repeats the chant often enough, he will form an association between the two parts of the sentence. When asked what is nine times nine, the number "eighty-one" will automatically be said.
• A young man does not automatically develop the habits of etiquette. He may be told that it is polite to tip his hat when he meets a lady, but may not adopt this pattern. A parent may ingrain this habit into the young man by taking him on a walk in public and tapping the back of his head when they greet a lady, and he will very quickly adopt the habit of doing so unprompted.
• There is a brief mention of intellectual habits, but the example he provides is historically inaccurate (he suggests that Roosevelt lost the 1912 election because he broke from the Republican party and lost the votes of people who habitually voted for that party - but in actuality he did not break from the party until after losing the nomination to Taft).
• There is also a brief mention, without any example at all, of moral habits, which cause us to make specific decisions without much consideration out of habit rather than thinking, such that both good and bad morals are reflexive rather than contemplated actions.

What should be observed in each of these cases is that the behavior is not naturally occurring. We are not born with the inclination to switch off a light, recall an equation, or tip our hats and there is noting in the situations in which these behaviors are needed that would incline us to perform them. We must, through artificial and deliberate means, create the association of behavior and stimulus in order to form habits.

Physiology of Habits

(EN: Pyle's description of the function of the nervous system is entirely outdated, and while it might serve to explain ideas that were believed at his time and which perpetuated to some degree today, my sense it is too misleading to preserve notes.)

Plasticity

Habits should not be construed to have the certainty of physical properties. One does not say that water has a habit of freezing at a certain temperature because it invariably does so and cannot do otherwise. Nor can it be said that plants have a habit of turning their leaves to face a source of light, because this too is invariable and involuntary. Human habits are not infallibly reliable.

Neither is it accurate to adopt the notion that human behavior is entirely variable. Our behavior is not entirely random based on the specific circumstances in which we find ourselves, as patterns of behavior emerge and are practiced with some degree of consistency regardless of the idiosyncrasies of an individual situation.

Instead, human habits should be regarded as having plasticity - the ability to be shaped and formed, but the tendency to hold the form in which they were last shaped. But there is great variability as to whether a change will alter their shape permanently.

Man is largely unique in his ability to alter his behaviors. There are a few species of mammals that show the ability to be conditioned by experience, though it remains questionable whether their "training" is a matter of a primitive form of logic or merely an advanced form of memory. In any case even higher animals do not have the breadth of variability and control that is exhibited even by rather dull humans.

This is what makes the study of psychology rather less reliable than the study of natural phenomena. Chemistry is a precise science, but biology is less so, and psychology even less than that. This does not disqualify it from being classified as a science, merely that it is far more complex and contains a greater range of probabilities.

The variance of probabilities is diminished as more is learned about the functioning of the human mind, though it seem improbable that it will ever become as exact a science as chemistry or even biology given that it deals in immaterial things - actions and thoughts.

Advantages of Habituation

The primary advantage of habituation is speed and accuracy, which Pyle illustrates with three examples: clerks learning to use a typewriter, students learning to play piano, and carpenters nailing shingles to a roof.

Typewriting provides a quantified example:

• During their first thirty minutes using the device, typists produced 120 words - but made about 115 errors
• After 45 hours of practice, they produced an average of 680 words in the same amount of time - and made 327 errors (while speed increased 5.6 times, errors increased only 2.7 times)
• An expert typist can produce about 3,000 words in that amount of time without a significant amount of errors

He also notes that, as speed and accuracy improve, the participant's mental state also improves. A person who is not habituated to something must concentrate on doing it, wastes a great amount of energy doing the wrong thing, feels defeated by their constant mistakes, etc. As they gain efficiency, they gain ability, and as they gain ability they gain confidence in their work and must expend less mental and physical energy in achieving greater results.

Or rephrased from a positive perspective, the gain in efficiency gives the performer greater certainty and confidence, feels power, and has a sense of achievement.

(EN: The examples of piano players and carpenters add nothing to this analysis, and are not quantified.)

Habit Formation

The simplest explanation to how habits are formed is simply "by repetition," although this greatly simplifies the mental processes involved.

Faced with any unfamiliar task or tool, we must first discover the method to accomplish it. This requires reasoning and a trial-and-error process to discover a course of action that produces the desired result. The actions we perform are not efficient, and we make many errors before we discover the correct course of action.

The second time we approach the same task and tool, we can rely upon our memory of what occurred the last time. If our memory is accurate we can do the same thing as before to achieve the same result. If out memory is inaccurate we will at least make fewer erroneous attempts to rediscover the correct action. With additional repetitions, we become more successful in remembering the exact action to perform to achieve the result.

We may also notice more efficient methods for doing so, whether by pure reasoning or by attempting to do things in a way that seems more efficient (but which may not be) until we recognize a way that is more efficient. Being able to do something at all is competence - being able to do it quickly and efficiently is skill.

And in time, we discover and remember the actions that are as effective and efficient as possible, becoming satisfied with our performance, and settling into a routine in which we no longer guess or experiment but merely do what is remembered - quickly, accurately, and without hesitation or deliberation.

Critical Factors

Pyle then identifies three factors that are critical in the formation of habits: feedback, pleasure, and consistency.

Feedback is an important mechanism in the formation of habits. We must recognize that an action had a specific effect to accept that the action is correct (competence) and we must be able to compare the speed and effectiveness of one action to another that was previously taken in order to recognize which of them was better, and to make that our standard approach (skill).

Pleasure is another important mechanism, because it focuses our attention. An activity may provide feedback, but if we do not take pleasure in the outcome we do not give attention to the feedback that is available, nor do we show much interest in comparing the feedback of repeated actions in order to discover the most efficient. It has been noted "repeatedly in laboratory experiments" that when a subject no longer takes delight in seeing the product of his work, he loses interest in it and makes little to no progress in developing skill.

Consistency is also another critical factor in the formation of habits: each action taken must produce a consistent result. For example, if striking a key on a typewriter produces a random letter, then no association is created between the action of striking that key and producing the desired letter - such that the user does not associate cause and effect. The result of this is frustration - the sense that what one does has no bearing on the outcome, and therefore it is unimportant to learn to follow any pattern.

Interacting with physical objects is an activity that supports all three of these factors. Interacting with people or animals is particularly problematic in all three regards.

Effective Practice

Academically, one can learn how to do something, but until it is attempted in practice it is neither perfected nor ingrained as a habit. But the question remains: how can practice be done in an effective manner?

Recall that developing skill requires attentiveness to the feedback of action - the subject must pay attention to what he is doing, pay attention to the outcome, and evaluate the differences among iterations. This requires constant attention and intense concentration.

The human ability to give attention, meanwhile, is limited - and even more limited in situations in which a person experiences frustration, which is a common emotion in the process of learning a new task because of the many errors and inefficiencies that result from the trial and error process.

Through his experimentation, Pyle has noticed that the duration of attention varies among individuals. In general, a person can remain attentive for a while, but must then cease his strivings and take a break from the activity in order to return to it with a productive attitude.

The amount of time varies with age and personality, but in his observation of college students he suggests that the best returns are achieved by half-hour periods of practice each day, and in working with younger children in can be between five and twenty minutes. And in all cases, the best rest interval between practice sessions is one day: any less and some residual frustration remains, any more and the activities of the last practice session are forgotten.

(EN: It occurs to me that monitoring frustration level on an individual basis is likely to define the best pattern for that individual. People who are slow to experience frustration learn quickly and can practice for greater periods of time. This may be a matter of personality, but it also has to do with their sense of success - if they make fewer errors and learn quickly, they are eager to continue practicing.)

It is possible to train someone more quickly - having multiple sessions and shorter rest intervals, but in general it is found that having eight half-hour sessions in one day is far less effective in developing proficiency than having one daily session for eight days. The exception to this is the very early stages of training, in which there is a great deal to be learned and the task can be componentized: such that the learner can practice one part of a task, take a break, then practice a different part of the task. If this is done, then four or five sessions a day (thirty minutes on, thirty off) can be very productive.

Educational Application

Learning skills is most closely associated to the environments of the classroom and the home in which children develop skills.

In the educational setting, the teacher controls the manner in which students are trained, and considering the general observation, Pyle offers the following advice:

1. To convey to students, through lecture and demonstration, an efficient and effective method for accomplishing a task.
2. To enable students to practice the skills they have learned by listening and observing so that they may receive direct feedback
3. To help interpret the feedback to students, as well as helping them recognize the connection between behavior and outcome
4. To limit practice sessions to half an hour per day on any specific subject - multiple sessions can be done in a day on different subjects
5. To be attentive to the frustration of learners. In particular, punishing bad performance decreases enthusiasm and the ability to improve
6. To be attentive to the different speeds at which different children learn

There is some mention of the value of parental assistance in instances in which the classroom does not provide adequate practice and instead assigns students homework. The parent must substitute for the teacher in the home environment, helping to guide the student's practice - and ensuring the student practices at all.

He carps a bit about parents who disparage learning activities, giving children the sense that what they are learning in school is of no importance. Likewise, parents who do not give students adequate uninterrupted time to study, but instead importune children with chores and errands, are harmful to education.

He also notes that parents, as well as employers, act as teachers outside of the schoolroom. Parents teach their children habits, for better or for worse, at a very young age and in the home throughout their development. Employers train their workers after childhood education has ceased. Both can become more efficient and effective by considering the nature of training and habituation.

Habit in Life

Taken all for all, a man is merely the sum of his ideals and his habits. His ideals guide him to attempt to achieve the correct outcomes, and his habits make him successful in those attempts. This applies not only to his functional ability in productive matters, but in his morals and social habits in other roles as well. The outcome of his life, in every regard, is the sum of his actions - and his actions are guided by ideals and habits.

At this point, Pyle waxes poetic about the work of educators, suggesting that "their work is that of gods" in that they are the creators of men: they do not produce the child, but they teach children the ideals and habits that will make them successful (or unsuccessful) throughout their lives. In a very real sense, the school makes the man by determining what he shall learn, remember, and practice throughout his life.

This is not to say that a person does not continue to learn after school, but "by twenty-five or thirty, character has set like plaster." The information we receive and habits we form prior to that are become a sort of baseline that is then more difficult to change because any new idea or practice is compared to that which has been believed and tested for years. We notice in particular that children learn quickly because they do not have a stock of knowledge that must be vanquished by new experiences, and old people become very set in their ways because any new experience must successfully challenge that which has been tested and maintained throughout life.

(EN: Eastern philosophies challenge a person to "empty his cup" when attempting to learn a new skill. That is, to set aside existing knowledge so that it does not become a barrier to accepting new knowledge. This seems a fine principle, in a general sense, provided that the new knowledge is actually better than the old - though in general those who demand that you forget everything that you know and accept what they have to offer are merely poor at making the case that their offering is indeed any better.)

At the same time, Pyle reckons that it is likely a good thing that people become set in their ways because consistency is necessary for order in life and society. In general, our habits are functional: they make us capable of getting the maximum success from minimal effort - and while they can sometimes be improved upon, the return on effort may not be worthwhile. The perpetual student, constantly forgetting his lessons as each new topic arises, is ineffective as a contributor to society.

It is for reasons of effectiveness and efficiency that habits are important to life. And it follows that developing the correct habits, those that are most efficient and effective, is important only to the degree that they are superior to the old habits. In essence, a person should choose his own habits wisely for the sake of his own life, as well as being attentive to the habits his children will learn, recognizing that progress as a society requires children to learn different and better habits than their parents.

Tips for Habit Formation

Three loose bits:

Seek a rationale for forming a habit. People are motivated to do things for a reason, and can be engaged in the learning process if they understand the benefit they will obtain by adopting a habit.

Find an effective means of practice. Practice must be safe, such that a person does not fear making mistakes during the early and difficult part of the process. But at the same time it must be meaningful enough to be able to provide feedback and exercise real skills.

Make a commitment to practice. The initial steps in learning a task will be difficult and progress will be slow at times. It is important to make a long-term commitment, setting aside a half hour per day for a long period of time, and then keep that commitment in spite of frustration.

Training in Components

Some tasks are too complicated, in that the involve many steps, to learn all at once. Others are inadvisable to practice immediately due to the potential damage done by inept hands. So while the best way to learn a task is to do it, there are certain instances in which it cannot be done in its entirety and in the context in which it is typically performed. Fortunately, some skills are transferrable to other tasks. For example, someone who has learned to sculpt on clay can apply many of the techniques to carving stone.

Pyle gives the experiment of a laboratory experiment that involved sorting cards into boxes. Once a person develops proficiency at the task, they can more quickly learn to sort the cards when the order of the boxes is changed. Or a student can more easily learn Italian and Spanish if he begins by studying Latin.

However, this does not mean that it is efficient to study one thing simply for the sake of learning something else. For example, if the goal of the student is to become proficient in several European languages, it is worthwhile for him to spend a year or two studying Latin. If, however, he means only to learn Italian, his time would be better spent studying that language.

In this sense, learning can be designed so that the student can learn fundamental skills first, such that some level of skill is available to him as he begins learning more advanced skills. A student must learn to recognize letters and phonemes before he can be successful at spelling, and should learn to spell before he learns to write, and should learn basic sentences before attempting to compose more complicated ones.

He does concede that there may be conflict among certain skills, when the techniques are so similar that they become antagonistic to one another. A lad who has learned to hit a baseball has more difficulty learning tennis because he will fall into the habit of swinging the tennis racket like a baseball bat - another who never learned baseball approaches tennis with a blank slate and, having no sense of how to swing a racket to hit a ball, will learn more quickly.

Moral Training

Moral training includes the development of habits that prepares a person for community life by preparing people to act in their relations with others in such a way that is mutually satisfactory. For example, the moral value of honesty is necessary if we wish others to believe what we tell them and if we wish to rely upon what others tell us. Without honesty, the information communicated between men is not reliable, and there becomes no point in communicating at all.

Morality provides necessary boundaries to human behavior to ensure that we can coexist and collaborate without interfering with one another's interests. People who share the same morals know what to anticipate from one another, and can thus refrain from interfering with others or avoid actions that others may interfere with.

In general, a person is considered to be "good" if he can be counted on to do the right thing at the right time in a social situation.

(EN: I'm not sure Pyle's definition of morality is quite clear enough here. For example, there is a convention of walking on the right side of a path so that people can move past one another without having to negotiate who will go in which direction as they pass. But I do not think that walking on the left side of a path could rightly be called "immoral" as it is merely unconventional. He may be a nuisance to others, but he is doing no harm.)

Morals are practiced as habits. A person must understand what they ought to do and why they ought to do it, and the benefit of constraining behavior - how his constraints benefit others and how he is benefitted by others who adopt the same constraints. And as with habits, they are developed by first being conscious of what to do and then doing in purposefully until it becomes a reflex action.

Home and Moral Training

The environment of the home is the most important factor in moral training, as it creates habits at an early age. The child does not begin school nor have many interactions with anyone outside of his family until the age of six, by which time the foundation of his character has been formed.

A child's relationship to his parents become the basis for the manner in which he will later regard all authority and his relationships with siblings for the basis of the manner in which he will interact with peers. Unless the child develops basic habits that support these relationships, it will be difficult to later establish any other good habit.

Many parents do not consider that the significance of the impact that these early years have, and are not systematic in the manner in which they interact with their children. And so their interactions are not systematic or consistent, which is detrimental to the formation of habits, and to psychology in general.

As previously mentioned, the earliest of habits becomes ingrained - any later attempt to influence our behavior must contend with and prove itself superior to the habits we have already formed, and which are followed as a mater of course unless there is a compelling reason to do things differently.

Consistency is of the utmost importance: the human mind seeks to make sense of the chaos of perception, and latches upon things that appear to be consistent across multiple repetitions. The mind of a child is not capable of figuring out why things are different from one day to the next, but merely recognizes them as inconsistent - and where things are inconsistent, there are no principles that serve to predict their nature.

In an inconsistent environment, the ideas and habits of a child are just as consistent: accidental, and formed by random chance. To be successful in parenting a child requires thought and planning to ensure that the child recognizes consistency and causal relationships, particularly between his own actions and the outcomes he witnesses.

School and Moral Training

The school supplements the moral training learned in the home, and provides the child with a wider range of interactions with peers and authority figures. Moreover, the school is a structured learning environment that is designed to teach students habits - and while the habits taught in school are primarily functional, the moral education of students cannot be neglected because morality makes an individual function in any task that involves other people.

The precise method for doing so is subject to some debate: whether moral education should be treated as a subject with its own syllabus or integrated into other subjects as the occasion demands. This is an experimental problem, ad a difficult experiment to conduct because the lessons learned in school are often not practiced until many years in the future - so observing cause and effect must be done over a very long period of time.

(EN: I'm reminded of the British "seven up" documentaries, which began in 1964 by interviewing a group of children at age seven - which may already be a bit late - and has followed them through life, re-interviewing them to the present day. It's interesting because it is a kind of study, albeit unscientific, of this very phenomenon.)

The tradition of teaching morals is based largely on the lecture - which is practiced in schools as well as churches. However "mere knowledge of right action will not ensure right action." Even if a child is attentive to a lecture doesn't mean he understands or agrees with the principles being offered, and even if he does understand and agree it does not mean he will put them into practice.

Learning habits requires practice - and a lecture does not constitutes practice. While it suffices to suggest and describe a course of action, it does not enable the audience to recognize situations where it is appropriate and to form the habit of taking a specific action. For that, they are left to their own, and may not recall the lesson when the time comes to use the knowledge. As such they are useful instruction in forming one's own moral habits, but fail in completing the task of creating those habits.

A second problem with moral education is that morality is often muddled. It may not be clear in the context of a real-life situation that a moral principle applies, and it may well be that multiple and conflicting principles seem to apply. Moral habits are like bricks, and unless they are cemented together into a system, they serve little purpose.