Breaking bad habits: uncertainty and behavior change
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Authors
Upadhya, Neha
Issue Date
2024-05
Type
Electronic thesis
Thesis
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Cognitive science
Alternative Title
Abstract
Several types of chronic disease management require consistent self-management of health behaviors such as nutrition and physical activity, but existing behavior change interventions fall short of providing the required support. I argue that the overlooked component in many of these interventions is past behavior. The habit formation model is an existing behavior model that focuses on the effects of past behavior on future behavior, but proponents of the habit formation model contend that habit-breaking is also required for long-term behavior change. The habit discontinuity hypothesis theorizes that disrupting the context cue linked to a habitual behavior leads to breaking of the habit. The existing literature looks at this hypothesis from the standpoint of habitual behaviors changed by large-scale environment disruptions, such as moving homes or, in a particularly extreme example, the COVID-19 pandemic. I argue that such large, difficult, and costly context changes are not necessary to create habit discontinuity. Instead, epistemic uncertainty can be added to a decision choice to shift perception of the environment instead of actual environment disruption. I hypothesize that the introduction of perceived uncertainty onto a physical activity choice will cause participants to shift behavior to the more certain option. I conducted two behavioral experimental studies using a sitting desk/standing desk paradigm to observe the effects of uncertainty on behavior. The first experiment shows that the paradigm can be used to test habitual behavior and a follow-up pilot showed that participants did indeed change behavior when given uncertainty information was located directly on the context cue. The second experiment sought to validate this result and test the effect of background uncertainty on the intervention. The results showed that epistemic uncertainty did cause participants to hesitate and consider their decision on which desk to use, and that interventions occurring in the low background uncertainty condition showed a higher change in behavior. Overall, I found that epistemic uncertainty can be used for a low-cost, targeted intervention to break the automaticity of bad habits and potentially support long-term behavior change.
Description
May2024
School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Full Citation
Publisher
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY