How to Make Positive Changes that Stick with Wendy Wood || The Psychology Podcast

[Music] welcome to the psychology podcast where we give you insights into the mind brained behavior and creativity I'm dr. Scott Barry Kaufman and in each episode I have a conversation with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding of yourself others and the world I live in hopefully it will also provide a glimpse into human possibility thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast today it's great to have Wendy wood on the podcast wendy is Provost professor of psychology and business of the university of southern california she has written for The

Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times and her work has been featured in the New York Times the Chicago Tribune Time magazine and USA Today and on NPR she lectures widely and recently launched the website good habits bad habits to convey scientific insight on habit to the general public her latest book is called good habits bad habits the science of making positive changes that stick it's so great to chat with you today Wendy oh it's great to be here thank you for inviting me my pleasure so you're a world's leading expert on the science of

habit change but actually my introduction to your research was not through that topic it was because I'm such a big fan of your work on gender differences thank you well that's nice of you to say that yes I also study gender but my current focus is mostly on habits great I got really interested in studying how people stick to the changes that they make in their lives what can we do to make those things that we really want to do persist that has captured my focus for the past few years in fact I've been studying

it for 30 years at this point yes so was the gender differences thing kind of like a side hobby yeah yes the extent that scientists have hobbies yes good point so yeah so we're gonna obviously if we're gonna focus on habit change today and I was reading the press materials for your book and it said you know we think we know how good and bad habits are formed but we have it completely wrong now is that a marketing ploy or do you think that's right that we have a completely wrong and who's we what what

do I have wrong we is all of us habits are part of the unconscious so we can't introspect about the weak we don't have intuitions about them in the same way that we do other parts of our behavior like when we make decisions to do something or have strong feelings about something in particular those are conscious experiences that we have and we recognize how does there something very different they're part of the unconscious and they learn in different ways than our more conscious thinking selves so is our conscious thinking selves always the better one of

the angel devil can our consciousness be the the devil sometimes in our unconscious be what we want to happen yes that's actually a pretty common misunderstanding about habits and that's because I think our bad habits are just much more salient than our good ones so we think about habits as things we don't want to do but in fact so many of our habits actually help us do things like when you drive a lot of the time you're not making active decisions you're just doing what's worked in the past which you've learned to do through repetition

and that's a great example of a habit because it's something that we do a lot and we do that thinking hmm and we have bad habits and obviously we have good habits now so the point here I guess is to get as many of these good habits as I can get go so I don't have to like think about it consciously is that right exactly because habits persist much more readily than our conscious decisions you know we've all had the experience of New Year's resolutions where we are determined we're going to change our life around

and do something different maybe save more money maybe work harder at our jobs maybe exercise and we might do it for a few weeks but then after a while it starts seeming less fun and less important and so most of us quit it's the failed new year's resolution experience and that's in part because we're relying on our conscious decisions and willpower to do it which is what makes sense to most of us that's how we think that we act and behave and get our behavior in line with our goals but in fact the way people

who are successful at these things are doing it is they do it automatically so they've figured out how to sync up their habits that automatic part of themselves that repeats what they've done in the past they figured out how to sync that up with their conscious decision making so I say so they're integrated yes exactly and all that this happens because we have multiple parts of our brain our brain isn't like this unified whole we have parts that are are specialized for different functions and part of our brains pick up on the repeated patterns the

get us rewards in everyday life and part of our brains typically thought of as executive control or associated with the frontal lobes is associated with making decisions and exerting willpower and those are your parts aren't always in aren't always compatible they're not always doing the same thing that's for sure and that's why what do we have bad habits so how do you define a bad habit Jenny habits are only good or bad in relation to our current goals so things that we start doing because it seems like they're fun or they work for us in

some way can become habits that then turn out to be problems like staying up late a few nights to watch Netflix or to play video games or to search the web you do that often enough and it becomes a habit and you're developing a pattern of insomnia so the first few times you do it it could be fun could be fine it's just when it becomes a repeated pattern that it's a problem and that's a bad habit so don't we have all sorts of bad habits that we're doing all throughout the day that become these

kind of habitual things like checking email and checking all sorts of playing one our iPhones and things like that if we step back sometimes we might realize holy cow I've really been caught up in these these bad habits yeah we supposedly all check our cell phones over 50 times a day and it's hard to imagine that most of us need to be doing that I think we do it when we're bored we check our cell phones when we're in social situations we don't want to be in maybe get in the elevator there's people there you

don't really want to talk to so you check your cell phone we use a it's cute buy all kinds of different experiences in our lives and so we tend to overuse it that's an interesting idea of overusing it in this notion there's nesting is objectively bad habits and you said it's relative to your goals and but you know we have so many goals that are always competing within ourselves you know we're cybernetic systems with so many conflicting goals how do you know which are going to bring out the best version of your whole self that's

another good question thanks Wendy would I think that the question of what goals to use to develop new HAP has to do with what behaviors you want to repeat on a regular basis I say the behaviors like eating healthfully saving money particularly as we all get closer to retirement eating healthfully going to the gym being responsive to our children and being there to listen to them those are all goals that we endorse pretty much every day and it would be wonderful to not have to think about doing those things but just do them automatically and

that's what the regular exercisers the people with happy families the people who are saving money effectively and living within their means that's what they do and that's the fascinating thing is until recently we thought that self-control was required in order to not respond to temptations to to exert self-denial make sure that you are living a healthy financially stable life but instead it turns out that the people who are doing these things on a regular basis are doing it automatically out of habit and that's why I wrote this book is I wanted to explain to people

how they can do this too most of us don't know really a whole lot about our habits I know there are lots of books out there I know that there's lots of blogs and other sorts of posts about habits and when I attend surveys and I've asked people so how much do you know about your habits and about 80% of people in my surveys say I understand my habits I know how they work but then you ask them so how successful are you at changing your behavior and making it stick and those same people say

not so great so whatever we know about habits it's not helping us I think the science really can what do you think of James Claire's new book I don't comment on other people's other people's work I will say that there's an absence of books out there that actually are informed by the science but can tell us something true for most of us there's lots of books out there that tell us what works for the writer or what the writer thinks might work for us but there's little hard data on what actually works that's what I

think is the difference between my book and the other books out there got it because there is 30 years of hard data you're just not distilled in a way that people can take in the part of their lives so easily exactly hey everyone if you find the themes we cover on the psychology podcast interesting and enlightening you might be interested in my new book transcend the new science of self-actualization the book is the culmination of my journey to scientifically discover the factors that can lead us to optimal health growth creativity peak experiences and deep fulfillment

I believe we could still manage to have peak experiences the most wondrous moments that make life worth living regardless of our current life circumstances we can choose growth for more you can visit transcend - book calm as transcend - book calm with a hyphen between the word transcend and the word book if you get a chance to read the book it'd be great if you could leave a review and Amazon tweet about it or share the book with friends I truly hope this book can help people get through these tough times and realize that we

all have greater resiliency creativity and potential within us than we ever realized okay now back to the show so you have this idea of friction and stacking could you please go into a little bit of detail about that yeah so how do you form a new habit is you have to repeat a behavior it's not enough to make a decision you can't just decide oh I usually eat cookies on the sofa at night and I'm gonna change that I'm going to do something else I'm going to do jumping jacks instead or push-ups when I would

normally eat cookies it doesn't work that way you develop a habit as you repeat the action so your habit memory depends upon what you have done in the past not your decision-making you want to repeat the behavior in a supportive context that's going to make it easy for you to keep doing the same thing over and over and you want to make sure that it's rewarding because people simply don't repeat things if they don't like them so if you really hate exercising at the gym and you want to increase your fitness then finding something else

to do is what's going to be most helpful or add some reward to going to the gym so for me I find working out on the elliptical really boring but I watch stupid TV shows when I do it and there's no other time of the day do I do that so working out on the elliptical has actually become a lot of fun for me and that's what people need to do in order to get a behavior that might not otherwise be rewarding something that they actually enjoy that's interesting friction is the part of the context

that makes it more difficult to do something so we don't realize how much influence context has in our lives and context is just everything it's the situations wherein it's the time of day it's the other people around us proximity how close things are to you is an important feature of context and that can be meal friction let me give you an example a study tracked cellphones we are our cell phone use is being monitored all the time you probably know this a study tracked cell phones how far they went to the gym this is hundreds

of thousands of cell phones over several months how far they traveled to a paid Fitness Center what they found is that if people traveled three and a half miles they went five times a month on average but if people traveled over five miles they only went once a month on average and what this suggests is that first up that difference of a mile and a half it doesn't make much sense to our rational thinking conscious self right if you want to go to the gym you're gonna go to the gym and it doesn't matter how

far away it is but it makes it more difficult takes a bit more time you have to think more about how to get there all of that adds friction to going to the gym and so you're making it harder on yourself if you go to a gym that's a distance from your house or your job you're much less likely to go it's the difference between an exercise habit and not having one I see so what differentiates those who have to score well in these self-report measures than those who don't what what are the what are

the self-control people have yeah so control is an interesting concept because we think that that's what determines whether we're going to be successful at changing our behavior or not right if you have a good self-control strong ability to resist temptations then you should be somebody who is able to make decisions and stick with them if you have poor self-control then you won't be able to do that that's the way most of us think so when we fail at our New Year's resolutions when we're not able to meet our goals then we tend to assume it

must be something wrong with my self-control I didn't want it enough instead what science has shown is that people who score high on self-control scales actually know how to form habits and they have automated the experience so that they don't need to rely on self-control they're not even making decisions it's their automatic response when their innocent situation it's like you driving a car when you're in that car you're driving you're familiar automobile you don't have to make decisions most of the time unless something unusual happens in the traffic and then we hope you are paying

attention but most of the time we're not so that kind of autopilot is what high self controlled people use to meet their goals they understand about friction and they understand about making it easy for them to achieve goals in life well that's very interesting so I am naturally curious of your thoughts about ego depletion theory then have you done work on that at all kind of viewing this self control is this kind of limited resource that it's tied to like glucose in our brains yeah I have not done anything with the glucose mechanism I think

there's good question about that the idea that self control is a muscle that it's depleted with use that was very popular for a while and is now being questioned by many researchers my explanation I have done research on the air in the area and I sometimes do get ego depletion effects so that people who have performed difficult tasks and are mentally tired mentally depleted they tend to fall back on their habits more than when people are more actively in control and I think some of the controversy has come because the experimental work is not always

ideally set up to capture that phenomenon it's a bit more elusive than many of us imagined initially well yeah I think that talked about such a complex mechanism you sort of expect that so why doesn't white knuckling through temptation work it's hard fun no most of us don't enjoy it it's a hard approach to stick with simply because we don't enjoy it and there was a very famous experiment done about 20 or 30 years ago by Dan Wagner with the difficulty of not thinking about white bears are you familiar with this oh definitely yes what

he showed in that study for listeners who aren't familiar with it but he showed in that is that if you are trying not to think of something it gives that thing energy so that when you are allowed to think of it in the future you do so with great frequency do you think about it even more often after you've been trying to inhibit it so the point to the study was to suggest that we have this sort of boomerang response this counterproductive response when we try to inhibit something it activates it further and we have

a hard time not thinking about it and we've all done this right when you die yeah you think about food constant life when you are trying not to spend money you can't help but notice all the new things that other people are buying that you are denying yourself this counterproductive quality makes it very hard for us to be successful at self-denial it's not a good way to try to change our behavior it's not going to work I see well it's good to know that there's other ways of getting it what you want to get it

yes one of the benefits of having a mind that has many different systems interconnected systems is that we have many different ways of learning and thinking some of them are accessible to us we're aware of them and some are not and the habit system is not available for us to introspect about we're learning habits all the time and we're not aware of it I'd like to take a moment to talk about our sponsor better help is there something interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals for quite a lot of us right

now drawing this coronavirus pandemic we are struggling with our most fundamental basic needs such as our needs for security connection and opportunities to master our work I think all of us could use some therapy right now I know I sure could which is why I've really been enjoying working with a professional therapist at better help so I can realize the best version of myself even under the current circumstances better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist and you can start communicating with your therapists in just under 24 hours

note that it's not a crisis line and it's not self health it is professional counseling done securely online there's a broad range of expertise available which may not be locally available in many areas in fact the service is available for clients worldwide what I really like about better help is that you can log into your account anytime and send a message to your counselor you'll get timely and thoughtful responses plus you can schedule weekly video or phone sessions so you won't ever have to sit in an uncomfortable waiting room as you typically have to deal

with traditional therapy better help is really committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed it's more affordable than traditional offline counseling and financial aid is available better hope wants you to start living a happier life today visit their website and read the testimonials that are posted daily here's a recent one for example Camila helped me turn my life around everything has been so positive for me since our first session deep gratitude I'm pleased to announce a special offer for listeners of the psychology podcast you can

get 10% off your first month of professional counseling by going to better help calm Ford / psych podcast that's better h e LP ford slash psych podcast join the over 800,000 people taking charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional okay now back to the show it doesn't the habit system kind of operated in an if-then sort of code source code in in a way yes because the habit system really is a sort of mental shortcut if I'm in this context what should I do to get a reward that's what the

habit system answers and it's actually the question it asks is what have I done in the past that has gotten a reward so when you wake up in the morning you go to your kitchen I go to my kitchen I make coffee without even asking myself how or do I want it today or will my day be better with it or without it I just make it I do I did in the past to get that reward of a morning jolt to help you wake up the problem is that it's this way to get into

bad habits that the habit system is very backward focused it focuses on past rewards what you experience as a reward in the past it doesn't recognize so well what you want to get as a reward today so if you decide that coffee isn't good for your health you may still find yourself thinking about it as soon as you get up in the morning because that's what you typically done and that's what your brain is organized to to focus on first thing in the morning making coffee that's your habit so I want to change a have

it do do we know how many do we have a certain alike idea of how many DS such a thing go take people say you could change any have in 21 days is that another thing that people just pull out of their s that's not informed by science but yes that is not very scientifically based in fact we think that it if you're interested in the origins what you think it comes to myself self-help book in the 1960s how long it takes to get used to a plastic sir a change in your face or appearance

of some kind that's amazing you track that down yeah it doesn't have much to do with habit formation nor change more changes than our appearance to form a habit takes much longer typically than three weeks two to three months is a better estimate if you're doing it reasonably consistently and you're getting rewarded for it so you like what you're doing and you're likely to do it again in the future then two to three months is probably the best estimate we have at this point for actions to become so automated that there's sort of second nature

there what you do without having to think or make decisions that's how long it will take changing habits is something very different and this is odd to think about for our conscious decision making self but once habits have formed rewards don't make a whole lot of difference in fact the consequences of the action become relatively unimportant and that's what researchers call the gold standard for knowing whether something is a habit if you change the context what people still keep doing it if you change the reward will people keep doing it change the outcome of behavior

that's the gold standard of whether something is a habit or not and let me give you an example of that I did a study a few years ago in a local movie cinema and we gave people stale popcorn to eat actually some got a bag of fresh some got a bag of stale they didn't know that they were getting that anyone was being stale popcorn they thought it was all thrash and people who had habits to eat popcorn in the movie cinema they ate it whether it was stale or fresh it could tell us they

hated the stale and it was awfully stale so it was really not good popcorn but they ate it anyway because they were in a Moody's cinema with all of the cues around them activating the habit and the outcome the taste the reward didn't matter that much people who didn't have habits to eat popcorn in the movie cinema they ate the fresh stuff and avoided the stale so they were acting rationally the way we'd expect people to act but the people with habits were just repeating what they did before because in the past it had been

rewarding and so the habit perpetuated well it's a great study for a sadistic psychologist to administer sadistic psychologists but I enjoy that was to test the limits to which people would go to repeat habits and that was the idea behind study and what it suggests is that you can't change habits by changing rewards right by finding some new reward that might work for some other behavior that's a common mean yeah that is suggested in the popular literature for changing habits but in fact habits don't work that way you have to change the cues that activate

the behavior yeah so in order to change a habit you have to add friction or remove the cues so that it's harder to do and it doesn't come to mind automatically can you give like a example on how I can stop picking my nails well let me give you an even more one which is has to do with smoking our country decided about 50 60 years ago to start putting friction on smoking we started taxing the purchase of cigarettes we removed advertising cigarette advertising we banned smoking from most public places and we'll even moved it

from the store shelves you can't buy cigarettes by picking up a pack in the store someone has to check your age and give it to you all of those things added friction to smoking and in so doing we cut smoking from almost 50% of the population of smokers to only 15% today which shows the power of the context were in to change our behavior because it changed what was easy it was no longer was like everyone was now in that five miles away from the gym study and they it was hard to get there it

just starts being too much work and after a while the discouragement makes it easier to change so what would you do to add friction to biting your nails or picking out them more that's a habit that many people have putting cyanide on my fingernails yeah there you go so they wouldn't bite them or it would be what we call one trial learning [Music] something unpleasant unpleasant tasting on your nails or wear gloves you have to take them off particularly at times when you know that you typically bite your nails it could be that you do

it because you get anxious maybe when you're working or during difficult conversations those times are the times to practice automating sitting on your hands wearing gloves painting your nails with something that tastes bad all of those things will help you in the future to stop by it again they add friction just wanted to take this moment to thank you all for your support of the podcast over the years if you'd like to further support the podcast I wanted to let you know a few things you could do to help make this podcast a better experience

for you all first I'd really appreciate it you could subscribe to the psychology podcast on iTunes this would help make the show more prominent on iTunes and increase our listenership I believe you can subscribe both on your iPhone to end on your computer second it'd be great if you could subscribe to our YouTube channel where you'll find videos of many of these conversations just search for those psychology podcast on YouTube third it'd be great if you could give the show a reading and review in iTunes I definitely read all the reviews and they're helpful to

others who are thinking about giving the show listen finally if you really want to show some love you can donate something to the show even just the price of a cup of coffee would really help me continue to do this podcast for you all to donate something you can go to this psychology podcast comm and click on the link at the bottom that says become a sponsor thanks again for your incredible support of the show over the years I do the show for you all because I truly love sharing my enthusiasm and love of the

mind brain and creativity and I really appreciate you joining me on this journey okay now back to the show well thanks for this free advice here I appreciate it I've been trying to think what's the difference between habits and addiction is just addiction just a habit that has become so repetitive that you feel like it's interfering with your longer term goals I mean how would you define the distinction between the two well I think habits are a component at most addictions but addictions are something more addictions are at least with substance using substances to a

point where you sort of lose control over the rest of your life addictions hijack this habit learning system but addictions have many other components as well so they're like a really bad habit run amok they are they take over people's lives in ways that most habits don't most of our habits are just much more circumscribed to specific contacts so that when we're in the context the response we've practiced comes to mind and that's just a shortcut for what to do and we usually just do it I see so you're talking about I mean you're talking

about a lot of using friction to change our habits how does Toto companies like uber reduce friction in the user experience well if you remember a few years ago uber had this pricing schedule where you would get this lightning bolt it would say that prices have increased say 1.5% and you would be you would get this surcharge this additional charge for every for the ride that you wanted to take and the problem with that is those of us who have an uber habit that made us start to think it was a very bad idea an

uber quit because figured out that it was friction on people using uber you're making people think and making people make decisions about whether to take the ride right now or not and that's the last thing ever wants as any company you just want people to be using your products automatically and not wondering huh do I really want to go in this ride right so though that can set that pricing structure has since changed and we only get a standard price but the uber ride but sort of an average they have average they have better data

so they're averaging the cost I see well I now understand this link I was trying to see what's in common between that gender differences research you've done in this topic and I mean you're really big into the content you're big into context and the environment you you could imagine like Robert Pullman would used to be like you know it's about it's about the genes it's about it's a trait perspective there are people with self-control and that's influenced by the genes you know but it sounds like you even invoked the G word once no I everyone

has the ability to learn habits in fact that is common across all the mammalian species so rats have habits dogs have habits cats have habits whales have habits we are all genetically endowed to form habits in similar ways what we find pleasurable and enjoyable and what our goals are those might be influenced to some extent by our genetic structure and certainly by our child-rearing and developmental experiences but the habit mechanism itself is pretty basic and it's common to all mammalian species as I said this really gets this research program really gets the heart of how

much we can change our you know personalities aren't personality traits just repeated habits of emotional functioning behavioral manifestations person etc motivational processes I mean you must take a habit of perspective on personality as well I guess no I wouldn't argue that I don't think habits or personality traits know habits are the repeated behaviors that we've learned to do in certain situations because we've been rewarded from for them in the past and personality traits are something quite different you'll need to ask a personality psychologist well I'm a personality it's like a but I was thinking that

william f-- lee sin's his approach he's like you know he has this ID he's like you're you're only more extroverted or more agreeable or more moral to the extent to which she repeatedly are those things so it just had me thinking that it seems like the habit approach could probably be integrated with the William fleece and sort of way of thinking about personality traits as density distributions people who are more introverted just are more introverted there's not like they're always introverted there's just more on the 4 or 5 out of 5 you know Likert scale

during the course of their day on average so isn't that essentially like their habit is to be more introverted I think I think probably what could frame it that way yeah possibly the habits that we have studied thus far are more discreet specific behaviors yeah yeah I see and that introversion might lead people to practice certain behaviors that could be helpful or could be hurtful to them in the long run so they might form good or bad habits because of who they are are their preferences their likes their attitudes their approach to life yeah I

mean your research gets at the heart of so much of what people really care about in their lives which is how much can they change how can culture I mean again I'm gonna keep going back to your gender difference stuff because I thought it was really I mean your gender differences work actually made an impact on my research and you did this work and there was this kind of like the evolutionary hypothesis there's a cultural role hypothesis what explains me preferences across different cultures and you sort of had this hybrid model yes so the basic

idea in our approach this was with Alice a blade that I did this work the basic idea behind our approach was that yes men and women have potentially different genetic orientations men might be oriented to do certain things women other things but what makes the human species so what made us so successful is culture and the ways that culture determines men's and women's activities in our society is really a huge determinant of what we think men and women are like so in our society women work good percentage of women work maybe 60 70 percent almost

as much much as men but they tend to work in slightly different jobs not as well-paid they tend to work in caretaking jobs you still see them more than men as elementary school teachers and nursery school teachers nurses those those distributions are changing but it's still the case that women tend to be in more caretaking positions so we make the inference women must have those attributes and men tend to be in more higher status higher paying positions and workforce and they're less likely to be stay-at-home dads and women are being stay again stay-at-home moms so

we make the inferences about what men should be like based on our experience of men in our culture and the basic argument is that our stereotypes reflect our understanding of what men and women do in our specific culture do you think that motivation plays a role there surely more women on average than men birds are interested in in the caretaking professions right yeah but we've seen those that change radically in the last couple of decades many more women than men are now graduating from college we see women being interested equally interested or more interested than

men in biology biological sciences so graduates in biology are leaning starting to lean more towards women than men that's true at the undergraduate level that's becoming true also at the graduate level the idea that we have these fixed-interest just doesn't seem to match very well the historical data yeah so I'm just trying to understand the position I thought that your physician was that you should only don't deny that there are some biological contributions sure but yeah but but you're talking about this interaction effect because I think that one could probably make a good case that

that something hasn't changed I don't think that that women are just as interested in social status and and dominance you know of like a leadership thing as men are on average that seems to be pretty robust sex difference I'm I'm wondering I mean would you argue there's no biological contribution whatsoever to that sort of thing no I would never argue that but I would hire that women are do not have access to those positions as much as men do cells of the patriarchy because of patriarchy so it's very hard to tease apart what is actually

due to an inherited disposition and what is actually due to the social circumstances that we find ourselves in and I think that right there is just this common thread throughout your whole career that I now see I now clearly see it I I was I was trying to figure out it was like well how did how does this the gender difference research linked to this but I think that you know you really have spent your career showing that regardless of all these other theory and things about and an inheritability research behavioral genetics and and other

aspects there's still quite a bit of wiggle room there in terms of how we can change and and particular habits that we may feel like are cast and stone forever you're kind of taking another look at that is that right exactly yeh I guess I could summarize that well thank you for your tremendous career Wendy seriously it's a very impressive plate all together in this book that's very digestible and very very easy to read and apply to one's life so thank you so much thank you for having me I hope people have a chance to

read the book and thanks again for being on the psychology podcast thanks for listening to this episode of the psychology podcast if you'd like to react in some way to something you heard I encourage you to join in the discussion below also please add a rating and review the podcast on iTunes and subscribe to the psychology podcast YouTube channel as we're really trying to increase our viewership on YouTube thanks for being such a great supporter of this podcast and be sure to tune in next time for more on the mind brain behavior and creativity [Music]

you