1: How Habits Work
The author periodically mentions Eugene Pauly, an individual whose medial temporal lone was destroyed by encephalitis, causing him to be unable to form habits. There's rather a lot of extraneous detail, and the story is used as a device to smooth over some of the more awkward transitions.
Switch to describing an MIT laboratory, where researchers are investigating habit formation, particularly the study of quotidian patterns. Then, a brief description of the brain structures - how cognitive thinking and analyzing new information tends to be centralized in the cortex, but habits and reflexes tend to be activated from deeper in the brain, near the basal ganglia - the precise part of the brain that had been destroyed in the patients mentioned above.
In rat-maze experiments, rats whose basal ganglia had been destroyed were never able to recall the correct route through the maze nor recall how to open food containers. Even in a simple T-shaped maze, they seemed to move at random, "taking a leisurely, unthinking stroll." But probes in the rats' heads showed a great amount of activity, constantly analyzing sensory input - as compared to rats with undamaged brains, which are able to form memories: those rates navigated mazes more quickly and with less mental effort.
The conclusion is that new/unfamiliar experiences require a great deal more brain activity to analyze sensory input. As the brain learns and recognizes, less brain activity is required. An in the third phase, when the route is learned, there is hardly any brain activity at all. Essentially, the basal ganglia take over and the thinking brain "goes to sleep."
He returns to peoples' morning routines. We do not need to hunt for things, as we remember where they are. There is no thinking or analysis as we put toothpaste on the brush, but it is done automatically. The simple act of getting ready for work requires hundreds of small decisions to be made, and once we fall into a routine, we essentially stop making decisions and follow habitual patterns.
The next example is given of driving a car: a novice driver takes quite a bit of effort to back out of a driveway - but within a few months does I quickly and easily, with no anxiety, and sometimes without paying much attention at all.
It is theorized that habits are formed as a method of saving effort. The brain attempts to find patterns in any activity, with the goal of creating a habit, and within a few repetitions is generally successful in so doing.
Given the constant bombardment of sensory information, we'd be in grave danger if we had to give all our attention to walking, ignoring everything but the motion of our legs. And thinking about every little task would certainly prevent us from higher functions, such as imagining and inventing.
Habits are likened to autopilot, but there is also an interrupt to habitual behaviors. We are largely unconscious of the environment as we walk a familiar route, until something unusual happens to trigger our conscious brain. The ability to re-start the thinking centers of the brain when there's a suspicious movement in the high grass prevented the extinction of primitive man. There are triggers that activate habits, and triggers that interrupt habitual behaviors.
Mention is made of the "three-step loop" in behavior. The author refers to it as cue-routine-reward (EN: others sources seem to use a common trigger-action-result terminology, but it's essentially the same.) The cue activates the routine, and the reward reinforces it.
Another important point is that habits are not permanent. An interrupt will stop a routine, and if the interrupt becomes commonplace, it will be incorporated into a new routine. But in general, the habitual behavior will result from a cue unless something unusual occurs.
Back to the rats: a habit is created by placing the reward consistently on one side of the T-shaped maze: the rat learns to turn to the right to get the reward, and will continue to do so. If the reward is placed on the left, it will take a few tries before the habit changes and the rat then turns to the left. But that new habit will form, replacing the old.
The reason human beings find it so difficult to change habits is the world tends to be quite consistent, and there is no experimenter who will change the location of the bait. Once we develop a daily habit of flopping down on the couch after work, there is no-one to remove the couch to help us develop a better habit.
Back to Eugene: he wasn't entirely unable to develop new habits, but it took a lot of time. In an experiment in card-pairing (choosing the correct item out of two choices, 8 pairs total), it took him nearly three months of daily practice to recognize the right choice - normal people can do this in a few rounds during a single session, and even chimps can learn within eight or ten sessions. But he still failed when shown the cards all at once and asked to pick out the correct ones, outside of the pair-showing pattern.
This brings the author to another observation: that there are no standard set of cues, which makes them difficult to predict. A person's behavior might be cued by any sight or sound, or even a scent or a tactile sensation. (EN: another observation from the study of phobias is that the association of the fear is often disjointed. A person bitten by a brown dog while reading a newspaper may develop a fear of newspapers or the color brown rather than dogs.)
Then, there's the consideration of the variety of rewards. In animal experiments, food is generally used as the reward - but for human beings, there are any number of physical or psychological sensations that serve as rewards. A person may be motivated by money, or by the mental satisfaction of accomplishment.
Another note is that habits are often pre-logical. We do not always do things because they make sense, or because we can see the causality between cause and effect. We may not be able to articulate what has cued us, or why we behave a given way, or why we value a reward. We perform habits unthinkingly.
Most habits are also unintentional. We know that fast food is unhealthy, but we eat it anyway. Sometimes, we try to think of a better alternative and make a conscious decision to eat fast food instead because it's an easier choice (actually, it's not making a choice but falling back on old patterns). Other times, we simply go to a QSR out of habit, without even pausing to think of alternatives.
And it's suggested that QSRs capitalize on the unconscious habits of their patrons through standardization: all their outlets look the same, have the same menu, have the same service routines, even have the same physical layout, all as cues to trigger habitual patterns of consumptive behavior. (EN: this is a bit too speculative - much of standardization is for operational efficiency.)
It's also observed that habits are easily broken by changing the stimuli. In the QSR study, it was found that a number of families who stopped eating at a given QSR did so because the location they habitually visited closed down. They didn't do research to find another location nearby, but simply abandoned the habit of going there because a significant cue (location) had been removed.