Bad Habits, By Ann M. Graybiel And Kyle S. Smith

Addiction is like all behaviours “the business of the brain”. Addictions are compulsive physical and psychological needs from habit-forming sustenances like nicotine, alcohol, and drugs. Being occupied with or involved in such activities, leads a person who uses them again and again to become tolerant and dependent eventually experiencing withdrawal. (Molintas, 2006).

In " The Neurology of Free Will," Charles Duhigg puts a special importance on habits –their inner working and how they can change. Duhigg describes how habits work through the cycle of cue, routine, and reward. Angie Bachmann from being a bored housewife to losing all her money through uncontrollable gambling.

In this assignment the author will explain the contribution of complementary psychological theories to the understanding of two specific behaviours,

“The Habit Loop” written by Paul Minor, explains how habit loops form and how they affect your brain and daily life, the beginning details the life of a man named Eugene. Eugene gotten sick rapidly and had an infection, viral encephalitis, diagnosed through a sample of cerebrospinal fluid through a needle in his spine, which exhibited a cloudy color, looked to be filled with microscopic grit. Doctors were able to prescribe Eugene antiviral drugs to counteract the infection he had, however after waking up from the coma, he had issues and doctors claimed Eugene wouldn’t be the same person as before. Since the infection destroyed parts of Eugene’s brain, specifically his medial temporal lobe, he struggled with amnesia and thought nothing was

We all know that habitual behaviours are difficult to change (think, for instance, about how hard it is for people to give up smoking.) Habitual behaviours are those behaviours with which we are comfortable. We do not want to move out of our comfort zones to change our habits.

The last and also the most important part, reward, is the motivation depended on which our brain will determine the value of a habit. “A reward helps our brains figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future” (19). If a habit is evaluated as a worthless, it will fade gradually in the future. The reward of my habit to procrastinate is that I can postpone to finish my homework and enjoy the free time in advance, even though it always causes an unpleasant result in the end. Our craving brains play an important role to maintain an existent habit loop, which amplify the effect of

When it comes to the topic of addiction, most of us will readily agree that it is a miserable trait to possess. An addiction is a physical and psychological state of being that if not treated correctly could result into harmful wrongdoing. In The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, he recounts a story in which a fatigued housewife named Angie Bachmann lost all of her family’s assets, amounting to a million dollars due to a gambling addiction. Every habit has three components: a cue or a trigger of an automatic behavior to start, a routine the behavior itself, and a reward which is how our brain learns to remember this pattern for the future. According to Duhigg, “you cannot extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it” (63). Duhigg

Depending upon a person’s physiological foundation, determines the compulsive engagement outcome. However habitually society adjudicates through assuming disengagement from compulsive behavior is uncomplicated. Individuals are distantly observing addicts behaviors and failing to comprehend the

“The Habit Loop” written by Charles Duhigg explores habits being subconsciously emitted within the brain causing actions to happen without thinking about it or even remembering how to do it. Eugene Pauly suffered from viral encephalitis of which left a hole in his brain, leaving his memory to deteriorate over time. Eugene's memory got worse and worse until he could barely remember anything that had happened 20 seconds ago. Although his memory was disappearing, Eugene could still carry out tasks such as eat or use the restroom, but when asked to explain how he does it, he can not tell you. Habits were embedded into his brain letting him survive merely on instinct rather than memory. Eugene could leave the house and walk up and down streets

Habit 1 : Be Proactive. The Habit of Personal Vision. According to Covey, this habit reflects our innate ability to take charge of our lives. We are not simply products of in-grained stimulus- response reflexes. We have the ability to take charge, plan ahead, and focus our energies on things we can control instead of reacting to or worrying about things over which we have little or no control. This habit allows us to rise above the ebbs and flows of the tides of our day-to-day lives and direct our lives.

In a state of dilemma, individuals find it interesting when people confronted with life’s problems. The way people behave when the answers to which are not immediately known. Different situation, people have to think of different technique to solve the problems. Analyzing a poem is different from analyzing statistical data. Both are related to analyzing but the mind has to be aware of each situation to apply in any cases. Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind talks about sixteen ways people use when it comes to describing the Habits of Mind. Curiosity is what motivates deep thinking when questioning and posing problems habit. The bravery to take responsible risks habit and listening with understand and empathy habit when hearing stories from others. For me, one of the most important habit that I have learned the most is responsible risks. Being greedy and wanted to be success in two categories is not going to work, I have to decide on letting go of one and remain focus on the one that I am planning to take the risk on.

We tend to think of habits as bad (smoking, cussing, biting your fingernails) but they can also be good (walking the dog, oatmeal for breakfast, a weekly date with your spouse). THE POWER OF HABIT shows how easily habits form. They rely on three simple things–a cue, a routine, and a reward–and don’t take long to stick. Our brains love habits. They allow us to be efficient. They help us do things like drive a car without constant self-monitoring. Once we learn where the brake pedal is and how hard to press the

Skinner’s reinforcement experiments conducted on rats showed the principles of operant conditioning. While working with rats, Skinner would place them in a Skinner box with a lever attached to a feeding tube. After multiple trials, rats learned the connection between the lever and food, and started to spend more time in the box procuring food than performing any other action. He used positive reinforcement, and negative reinforcement to produce or inhibit specific target behaviors. Therefore, if a specific behavior is reinforced then the probability of that behavior occurring again is increased. Based on Skinner’s view, this theory can be applied to learning because learning is nothing more than a change in behavior. Operant conditioning encourages positive reinforcement, which can be applied in the classroom environment to get the good behavior you want and need from students. One of the ways of reinforcing a student’s behavior is through praise. Also teachers can build operant conditioning techniques into their lesson plans to teach children possible skills as well as good behaviors. For example: to give a smiley face, or motivational stamps to encourage children to perform correctly and encourage them to repeat such action again.

We are creatures of habit. Whether they are good or bad, habits shape our actions and help us get through our days. As Charles Duhigg describes in his book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, habits “emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort.” They are routines that automate parts of our behavior. Habits can be so firmly ingrained into our neural networks that we aren’t actually conscious of them, and we don’t need to put much thought to follow through them.

The ability of doing something without actually thinking about it is automaticity. Ever since I was a child I always wanted to learn how to drive a car and as soon I turned eighteen I enrolled in driving classes, as eighteen is the legal age to drive in my country. I was always a keen observer when my parents drove or when others drove a car. The stimuli in the environment enabled me to memorize and rehearse much of the driving rules even before my driving classes began. I wanted to take driving lessons to gain practical and hand-on experience and to learn skills that are important as a driver. This resulted in the output, i.e., my behavior to learn a new skill. What happened between the period of time, when I memorized the rules of driving and after I gained my driving license, was information processing. I drove my mother’s car for two years and driving was second nature. Due to my job profile, I had to reside in different cities around the world and therefore found convenient and economical to travel by public transport. Our sensory functions hold information in our memories for a brief span of time and because of that, after a couple of years, I forgot how to drive a car as I became accustomed to travelling by public transport. After a decade, when I returned to my home city, the population had increased rapidly and travelling by public transport was a nightmare and extremely challenging as the government had not invested in increasing the capacity of public transport. I