Construct · 5 fields · 9 citations

Where does habit collide?

One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.

● jingle · one name, five constructs Nearest construct by meaninghabituscompare the meanings
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Every construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to habit is habitus.

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SRHI ITEMS ADAPTED (2007)habit5 CONSTRUCTSInformation systemsLIMAYEM · UTAUT2Social psychologyWOOD · VERPLANKEN · SRHINeuroscienceSTRIATUM · DEVALUATIONEconomicsBECKER · MURPHY · 1988PhilosophyARISTOTLE · DEWEY · HEXIS

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2026

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Information systems

the extent to which people automatically keep using a system they have already adopted, because of learning.

The extent to which people tend to perform behaviours automatically because of learning, Limayem, Hirt, and Cheung's 2007 definition, applied to continued use of a system a person has already adopted. They gave habit three antecedents (frequency of prior use, satisfaction, and comprehensiveness of use) and one job: to weaken the link between intention and use, so that habitual users act without consulting their intentions. Venkatesh, Thong, and Xu put it into UTAUT2 in 2012 with four items on habit, addiction, compulsion, and naturalness, letting it predict intention and bypass it to predict use. The construct is self-reported and the automaticity is asserted, not observed.[1][2]

Unit
A user's relation to a specific system
Recovery means
Habit breaking on switching or discontinuance; not modelled in the source
Measured by
Self-report items adapted from the SRHI; prior-use frequency as a proxy
Scales indexed for this construct
  • UTAUT2 habit (HT)Venkatesh, V., Thong, J. Y. L., & Xu, X., 2012 · automatic, learned use of the technology4 items

Social psychology

a behaviour made automatic through repetition in a stable context, so the context cues the response without a decision.

A behaviour that has become automatic through repetition in a stable context, so that the context cues the response without a decision, Ouellette and Wood's 1998 account, backed by a meta-analysis showing that past behaviour predicts future behaviour directly when the behaviour is frequent and the context stable, and through intention when it is not. Verplanken and Orbell's 2003 Self-Report Habit Index measured habit as a construct rather than a frequency count: twelve items on repetition, lack of awareness, lack of control, efficiency, and identity. The index was built to show that habit is more than how often you did it, and its critics answer that a self-report of automaticity is still a report.[3][4]

Unit
A person's relation to a specific behaviour in a specific context
Recovery means
Habit change through context disruption; new habits over weeks of repetition
Measured by
Self-Report Habit Index; frequency × context-stability indices; response-frequency measures
Scales indexed for this construct
  • Self-Report Habit Index (SRHI)Verplanken, B., & Orbell, S., 2003 · automaticity, repetition, and identity of a specified behaviour12 items

Neuroscience

a stimulus-response association that keeps running after the outcome it once earned has been devalued.

A stimulus–response association that keeps running after the outcome it once earned has been devalued, the operational definition from animal learning, which Yin and Knowlton in 2006 tied to the dorsolateral striatum, with goal-directed action depending instead on the dorsomedial striatum and prefrontal cortex. Graybiel's 2008 review described habits as chunked action sequences whose neural representation shifts from evaluative to automatic circuits with training. The criterion is behavioural and experimental: an animal that keeps pressing the lever after the food has been paired with illness is acting from habit. Nobody asks the animal.[5][6]

Unit
A learned action in an organism, under a training history
Recovery means
Return of goal-directed control; relapse to habit under stress or cue exposure
Measured by
Outcome devaluation and contingency degradation tests; lesion and recording studies of striatal circuits

Economics

a good is habit-forming when past consumption raises the marginal utility of present consumption, building a stock of consumption capital.

A good is habit-forming when past consumption raises the marginal utility of present consumption, Becker and Murphy's 1988 formalization, in which a stock of consumption capital accumulates and a forward-looking consumer with stable preferences chooses to build it. Addiction is the strong case: adjacent complementarity so large that small changes in price or expectations produce large swings in use. The model is explicit that the habituated consumer is maximizing and knows what they are doing. Habit here is a property of the utility function, estimated from consumption dynamics, and it entails no automaticity at all.[7]

Unit
A consumer's intertemporal utility over a good
Recovery means
Cold turkey or gradual reduction as the optimal path from a high stock
Measured by
Estimated complementarity between past and current consumption in panel data

Philosophy

a settled state of character acquired by practice, under which the virtues fall, making the right act easy.

A settled state of character acquired by practice, Aristotle's hexis, the genus under which the virtues fall: we become just by doing just acts, and the disposition, once formed, makes the right act easy and pleasant. Dewey's 1922 Human Nature and Conduct made habit the basic unit of conduct and insisted it is not repetition but an acquired predisposition to ways of response, active and projective, capable of intelligence. On both accounts habit is the material of character, not a lapse from it; the automaticity the neuroscientist measures would be, for Dewey, a habit that has gone routine.[8][9]

Unit
A person's character, formed over a life
Recovery means
Re-formation of habit through reflective practice
Measured by
Not measured, analysed conceptually; instantiated in conduct

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Nearby collisions

behavioral intention6 names · 7 citationsjangle · five names, one constructengagement8 fields · 13 citationsjingle · one name, seven constructsloyalty6 fields · 10 citationsjingle · one name, six constructshabitus4 names · 6 citationsjangle · one disposition, several framings

References

  1. Limayem, M., Hirt, S. G., & Cheung, C. M. K. (2007). How habit limits the predictive power of intention: The case of information systems continuance. MIS Quarterly, 31(4), 705–737. https://doi.org/10.2307/25148817
  2. Venkatesh, V., Thong, J. Y. L., & Xu, X. (2012). Consumer acceptance and use of information technology: Extending the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology. MIS Quarterly, 36(1), 157–178. https://doi.org/10.2307/41410412
  3. Ouellette, J. A., & Wood, W. (1998). Habit and intention in everyday life: The multiple processes by which past behavior predicts future behavior. Psychological Bulletin, 124(1), 54–74. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.124.1.54
  4. Verplanken, B., & Orbell, S. (2003). Reflections on past behavior: A self-report index of habit strength. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 33(6), 1313–1330. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2003.tb01951.x
  5. Yin, H. H., & Knowlton, B. J. (2006). The role of the basal ganglia in habit formation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 7(6), 464–476. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1919
  6. Graybiel, A. M. (2008). Habits, rituals, and the evaluative brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 31, 359–387. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.neuro.29.051605.112851
  7. Becker, G. S., & Murphy, K. M. (1988). A theory of rational addiction. Journal of Political Economy, 96(4), 675–700. https://doi.org/10.1086/261558
  8. Aristotle. (2009). The Nicomachean ethics (D. Ross, Trans.; L. Brown, Ed.). Oxford University Press. (Original work ca. 350 BCE) https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780199213610.book.1
  9. Dewey, J. (1922). Human nature and conduct: An introduction to social psychology. Henry Holt. https://doi.org/10.1037/14663-000

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