by Ben Jane
How much control over our actions do we actually have?
We like to think that we’re fully in control of our actions but we don’t have to look too far to see that the model of rational choice making is quite limited. Put a new kitchen in an old house and three months down the line you can still find yourself absent-mindedly reaching for the old cutlery drawer. Get in the car to go somewhere and you might, on occasion, find yourself driving to work rather than your intended destination. These actions are habits, patterns of behaviour that occur automatically when in particular situations and faced with specific cues or triggers. Trying to make sustained lifestyle changes for health reasons can require the disruption of old, unwanted habits and the creation of newer, more desirable routines (Danner et al, 2008, Marteau et al, 2012), the amount of willpower needed, or strength of intention to change might not be quite as important as how well we can create new habits.
We need to create shortcuts in our thinking just to get by.
A reliance on goals or intentions alone requires a more reasoned, controlled approach to decision making which can be cognitively demanding, difficult to sustain in the long term, and easily disrupted if stressed or having to make many other lifestyle decisions (Baumeister et al, 1998; Verplanken et al, 2006).
