Journal
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Volume 33, Issue 4, Pages 563-578Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/09567976211045345
Keywords
habit; attribution; automaticity; lay theories; cognitive bias; open data; open materials; preregistered
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Habits play a significant role in human behavior, yet people often attribute their behavior to inner states rather than habits. This study found that habit strength was a better predictor of behavior than inner states, but participants tended to explain their behavior based on inner states.
Habits underlie much of human behavior. However, people may prefer agentic accounts that overlook habits in favor of inner states, such as mood. We tested this misattribution hypothesis in an online experiment of helping behavior (N = 809 adults) as well as in an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study of U.S. college students' everyday coffee drinking (N = 112). Both studies revealed a substantial gap between perceived and actual drivers of behavior: Habit strength outperformed or matched inner states in predicting behavior, but participants' explanations of their behavior emphasized inner states. Participants continued to misattribute habits to inner states when incentivized for accuracy and when explaining other people's behavior. We discuss how this misperception could adversely influence self-regulation.
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